When it comes to gaining votes in Florida, a
tried and true method has always been to talk tough on Cuba: however
old the tactic, it always seems to work, and Republican presidential
hopefuls know that.
Aware that Tuesday's Florida primary may prove decisive for their
White House aspirations, GOP frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt
Gingrich have spared no anti-Castro slogans or criticism of US
President Barack Obama's soft-handed Cuban policy.
The Miami Herald didn't even need an editorial to sum up the state
of affairs. A caricature, showing Romney and Gingrich energetically
jumping on an effigy of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, did the
trick Friday.
"Look! I'm stomping on Fidel harder than he is," says a cartoon
drawing of Romney.
"Baloney! He's a fake stomper! I'm the real stomper," Gingrich
retorts.
A weary-looking couple looks on: "Going after the Hispanic vote
again," the cartoon says.
Indeed, talk on the economy, jobs and even personal attacks have
given way to a priority issue: showing the will to shake a fist at
Fidel and his brother and successor, Cuban President Raul Castro.
"If I'm president of the United States, I will use every resource
we have, short of invasion and military action...to make sure that
when Fidel Castro finally leaves this planet, that we are able to
help the people of Cuba enjoy freedom," Romney vowed late Thursday.
Gingrich countered: "It's amazing that Barack Obama is worried
about an Arab Spring...and he cannot bring himself to look south and
imagine a Cuban Spring."
The rhetoric is hardly surprising: Florida's Latino community
comprises 13.1 percent of the state's 11.2 million registered
voters. What's more, 32 percent of Florida's Hispanics are from its
decades-old Cuban-American community, according to the Pew Hispanic
Centre.
A large chunk Florida's Cuban community consider themselves
anti-Castro exiles, as shown by the state's Congressional
representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Marco Rubio, and the Diaz-Balart
brothers, all of whom are of Cuban descent and radically anti-Castro.
It is no wonder that GOP candidates, particularly Romney and
Gingrich, have shown support for the group, trying to bring the point
home by visiting the Versailles restaurant, the heart of the
anti-Castro movement in Miami's Little Havana.
"If a candidate so much as mentions any kind of lifting a sanction
or closeness to the Cuban regime, I'm telling you, that election is
lost," journalist Ninoska Perez, of the anti-Castro Radio Marti, told
CNN.
And yet times could be changing.
According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, the percentage of Florida
Hispanics registered as Republicans has declined since 2006, when
they were a majority. Nowadays, Democrats lead by more than 110,000.
And in a sign that the effectiveness of anti-Castro rhetoric could
start to fade, candidate Ron Paul received unexpected applause
Thursday when he distanced himself from his rivals and called for
change in a policy that has failed for over half a century to deliver
the desired results in Cuba.
"The Cuba issue, as important as it is to Cuban-Americans, I don't
think it's dictating who they're going to vote for," Tony Jimenez,
founder of the NGO Roots of Hope, which seeks to bring together young
people from Florida and Cuba, told CNN. "More and more each day,
people are more concerned with the economy."
But judging by the campaign orientation of the candidates, that is
still not a majority position. For that reason, at least until
Tuesday, the message "bring down Fidel," which has worked so well in
Florida for 50 years, will prevail.
