Amid all the headline-grabbing speculation about the lame-duck U.S. House of Representatives, this one won’t get as much attention as it deserves. But this will be the last go-round for Democratic Congressman Howard Berman of California as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. His replacement: Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the quintessential hard-line Cuban-American from the heavily Jewish 18th Congressional district in South Florida.
The implications are not positive for President Barack Obama. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen, who’s been in Washington since succeeding Claude Pepper in 1989, will do her best to keep fighting the Cold War on Cuba and making it a priority to maintain better relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than with President Obama.