Jeb Bush is reconfirming that he is just as conventional and ideological as any other hawk in the GOP. He delivered a foreign policy speech at a luncheon for the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, and touched on Cuba policy:

Bush not only reaffirmed his support for the U.S. trade embargo, but said America should consider strengthening it.

It’s no great surprise that a Florida Republican is still committed to continuing a failed Cuba policy, but it seems worth noting because it is so completely at odds with his normal self-presentation as a pragmatist. Supporting the continuation and intensification of a policy that has failed to produce any desirable results for over half a century is a perfect example of ideology trumping experience and evidence. Despite the futility of the embargo, Bush wants an even more restrictive one. That tells us much more about the kind of foreign policy that Jeb Bush would conduct if he were somehow to become president than anything else he said in his speech yesterday. When faced with policy failure, he urges more of the same failed policy, and faults those that are making any attempt to change the policy for the better. We already saw where this tendency to persist in foreign policy error got the country under his brother. There is no need to risk repeating that experience.