With Rubio out, Cuban-Americans in Congress reclaim battle on Cuba | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Marco Rubio’s presidential flame-out was a big blow to South Florida Cuban-Americans who want to reverse the U.S. rapprochement with Cuba. But the Florida Republican senator’s Cuban-American colleagues in Congress promise they’ll carry on the fight against President Barack Obama’s maneuvering around the U.S. embargo with Cuba.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart acknowledged that Rubio – the most prominent critic of the White House Cuba policy – quitting the race had hurt hopes that, if elected president, he could reverse the unilateral steps already made. But Diaz-Balart said he and his congressional colleagues had never stopped working to ensure that the public understood the reality of life in Cuba.

“Rubio is going to be missed because of his talent, because he’s been extremely effective,” he said. “But we’ve been winning these battles pre-Rubio. We’ll continue to win them post-Rubio.”

South Florida Republicans such as Diaz-Balart and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have long maintained their uncompromising positions against Cuba, but questions remain whether they and other Cuban-American politicians have the political capital to stop Obama and his aggressive push to end more than a half-century of hostility with the island nation. Rubio’s loss in the Florida primary and the lack of outcry over Obama’s policies reflect changes in how much of the population, including in Florida, sees the Cuba issue.

“They still have their constituencies,” Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue research center in Washington, said of the South Florida politicians. “Their voices are there, but they don’t have the following that they once had. Now they’re alone.”

The once dependable hard-line community has softened on Cuba. Polling by Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute has followed that evolution from 1991, when 87 percent supported the embargo, to 2014, when 52 percent favored lifting it.

Shifter noted that only a small crowd gathered in protest in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, the heart of anti-Castro sentiment, after Obama and Cuban leader Raúl Castro announced the start of bilateral relations on Dec. 17, 2014.

Since the announcement, the administration has relaxed travel restrictions, eliminated limits on remittances and allowed American companies to sell to Cuba on credit.

U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes reiterated Wednesday that the administration aimed to make normalization of relations with Cuba “irreversible.”

William LeoGrande, a Latin America specialist at the American University School of Public Affairs, argues that Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen can no longer count on as many Republican colleagues to support them on Cuban issues because their own business constituents are interested in doing business on the island.

“I just don’t think there are any major national Republican figures who have a stake in going back to the old policy,” LeoGrande said.

Diaz-Balart disputes that there is a lack of congressional support for stopping the Cuban rapprochement. In the past two years, he said, members of the House of Representatives roundly supported legislation against the changes in Cuba policies that prohibited funds for certain commercial flights and licenses of marine vessels.

“They’re not doing anything to help the Cuban people,” Diaz-Balart said of the changes. “This is the bottom line. Look at the facts. What they’re doing is incentivizing and doing business with the Cuban military.”

While Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, whose father is from Cuba, also has spoken out against Obama’s Cuba policies, he hasn’t made it a significant part of his campaign. Even when asked directly at a recent Miami debate whether he’d roll back Obama’s policies, Cruz said yes – then pivoted to other foreign policy issues such as Iran.

But the Cuban-Americans in Congress are largely united.

The day after Rubio bowed out of the presidential race, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Ros-Lehtinen took to their chamber floors to voice opposition to Obama’s planned trip to Cuba. Next week, Obama will become the first U.S. president to set foot in Cuba in almost 90 years.

“The president’s meeting with civil society is such a low benchmark, the official Cuban newspaper Granma stated that Obama’s visit destroys the myth that Cuba violates human rights,” Ros-Lehtinen said on the floor. “The leader of the free world has chosen a legacy-shopping photo op enjoying a baseball game with a murderer and a thug.”

Menendez spent nearly 40 minutes on the Senate floor Wednesday giving a point-by-point critique of Obama’s policy changes. He accused the president of violating his promise not to visit Cuba unless there were tangible improvements in respect for human rights.

“The president has the bully pulpit of the nation, so he can paint broad pictures but that picture is totally inaccurate,” Menendez told McClatchy afterward. “And in many cases simply not true.”