fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The Paul-Rubio Fight over Cuba

Rubio has made himself the leading defender of a bankrupt policy that also happens to be broadly unpopular.

Rand Paul said recently that he thought normalization with Cuba was “probably a good idea” and that the embargo “hasn’t worked.” That prompted Rubio to declare that Paul “has no idea hat he’s talking about.” Weigel reports on Paul’s response:

That got Paul thinking, and he took to social media today to pummel Rubio. In a two-paragraph post on Facebook, Paul asked why Rubio didn’t want a “new approach” instead of the continuance of an obvious debacle.

“Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat,” he wrote. “I reject this isolationism. Finally, let’s be clear that Senator Rubio does not speak for the majority of Cuban-Americans.”

The jab about “isolationism” is somewhat amusing, and it gets at a lot of what’s wrong with Rubio’s position on Cuba and with his foreign policy views as a whole. Rubio is quick to accuse others of favoring “retreat” and “disengagement” from the world, but there are few other members of Congress that have been as resistant to diplomatic engagement in practice as Rubio. He has wanted to set conditions for any deal with Iran that would make it impossible to reach a deal, he insisted on recalling our ambassador to Syria almost as soon as Ford got there, and he has taken the lead in denouncing normalization with Cuba. Now I think that the isolationist label doesn’t accurately fit anyone in modern America (nor was it an accurate description of many people in the past), but refusing to engage in diplomacy and commerce with other countries is as close to it as one is likely to get nowadays.

On Cuba, Rubio has made himself the leading defender of a bankrupt policy that also happens to be broadly unpopular. Some people have looked at Rubio’s campaign against normalization and asked, “What could be the downside for him politically?” As I see it, Rubio has a lot to lose and almost nothing to gain. He is allowing himself to be pigeonholed as a foreign policy hard-liner and a dead-ender in a genuinely bad cause. In this exchange with Paul, he is playing the part of a wannabe party-line enforcer who can’t even keep fellow Republicans in line. Rubio’s arguments may please other hard-liners, but they will alienate many less ideological voters and they already insult the intelligence of the people that disagree with them. They will also probably increase Rubio’s unfavorability and disapproval numbers. By going to the mat for such a lousy policy, it will also cause more people to question both his policy and his political judgment.

Paul’s position may not help him with that many voters in the Florida Republican primary electorate, but it’s the obvious position that he would have been expected to take. It’s also the obvious move for anyone who identifies as a conservative realist as Paul does. Had he not come out in favor of normalization, it would have given would-be supporters a new reason to doubt him, and he would have missed an easy opportunity to distinguish himself from the rest of the party’s likely 2016 field on an important new foreign policy issue. And Paul is far from being the only Republican inclined to support normalization. Not only are there other members of Congress that take the same view, including Jeff Flake and Justin Amash, but according to at least one survey taken this year more Republicans nationally support this position than oppose it. Republicans are far from monolithic on this question, and most don’t share Rubio’s hard-line views.

Advertisement

Comments

Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here