President Bush has provided an opening for Democratic politicians in Florida with this summer’s restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba. Congressman Jim Davis, for example, has filed a family-friendly amendment to spending legislation that lets Cuban-Americans visit island families annually without a specific license. Democratic Senate candidate Betty Castor is emphatically on the record as being “totally opposed” to the restrictions and has labeled them “not humanitarian.”
What would be the ultimate stand on principle, however — even for “moderates” — would be the denouncement of the 40-something U.S. economic embargo. It has had an inarguably adverse humanitarian impact on the Cuban people — not Fidel Castro — for two generations. But that’s too politically dicey.
Cuban-Americans still represent nearly 60 percent of this state’s 850,000 Hispanic votes. That’s the principal reason the embargo remains untouchable for Florida pols — even moderates.