Barack Obama has an op-ed piece appearing in today's Miami Herald, in which he calls for unrestricted travel and remittances to Cuba for Cuban-Americans and Cuban nationals living in the United States. Reports the Herald's Beth Reinhard:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for ''unrestricted rights'' for Cuban Americans to visit and send money to family in Cuba, just days before his first pilgrimage to Little Havana as a presidential candidate. President Bush clamped down on family travel and remittances to Cuba in an effort to squeeze Fidel Castro. The policy has become a flash point in the Cuban-American community, which traditionally leans toward the GOP.
''Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island,'' Obama wrote in an opinion column published in today's Miami Herald. ``Accordingly, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.''
Obama is expected to repeat his message Saturday at Miami-Dade County Auditorium, a site laden with nostalgia for Cuban exiles. It was there that President Ronald Reagan declared ``Cuba sí, Castro no'' during a landmark, anti-communist speech in 1983 that emboldened a Cuban-American community then on the political fringes.
About 1,100 tickets have been sold so far to Obama's speech, with the proceeds going to the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. The $30 entry fee is a fraction of the $2,300 donation typical of presidential fundraisers.
''This speech has so much symbolism and value, coming in the heart of the Cuban-American community,'' said the local party's chairman, Joe Garcia. ``Sen. Obama has come to the conclusion that the majority of Cuban Americans have come to, which is that more travel is good for freedom and good for democracy.''
A Florida International University poll in March of 1,000 Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade found that 55 percent support free travel to Cuba. But some exile groups argue that easing the restrictions would be a mistake.
''We regret that Sen. Obama has been so ill-advised as to assume that lifting sanctions against Cuba's dictatorial regime will bring about change,'' read a statement issued by the non-partisan Cuban Liberty Council. ``It is sad that he does not apply the same principles used to bring about change in South Africa where blacks were victims of the same apartheid as Cubans on the island.''
Obama's stance puts him at odds with Republican presidential field and could open the door for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, to continue a foreign policy spat that began during a televised debate last month. ...
Or could Barack be looking to peel off Cuban-American voters who were outraged by the increased restrictions imposed by President Bush in an election-year ploy in 2004? That clamp-down caused some Cuban-Americans to revolt, and even to quit the GOP. Yet, at the end of the day, Bush still carried Florida's Hispanic vote.
Obama could have in mind the 30 percent of the Cuban-American vote won by Bill Clinton, along with the state, in 1996. But Clinton accomplished that, not by liberalizing toward Cuba, but by cracking down.
Time will tell if Barack's strategy will help or hurt him in the Sunshine State.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
