But How Will It Play In Miami?

by Dish Staff

The supposedly implacable, politically powerful bloc of Cuban exile voters in southern Florida has long been one of the obstacles to a rapprochement with Cuba, but Annie Lowrey points out that this bloc isn’t as solidly Republican or pro-embargo as it used to be:

Is there a chance that President Obama’s policy might swing some Cuban-Americans back towards the Republican Party? Certainly, and we won’t know for sure until we get new polling data, likely in a number of weeks. But it is worth noting that those younger Cuban-Americans tend to be much more supportive of diplomatic normalization than their older counterparts. A recent Florida International University poll found that 90 percent of young Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County — 90 percent! — favor having diplomatic relations with Havana. A similar proportion support lifting the travel ban, and just more than 60 percent of young Cuban-Americans support ending the embargo.

Nate Cohn looks at some other evidence that Cuba just isn’t that much of a political flashpoint in Florida anymore:

It’s hard to know whether Mr. Obama’s decision will move the needle among Cuban-American voters. Polling data reflecting Mr. Obama’s decision, which will arrive in a few weeks, will tell us more. Nonetheless, the available polling data suggests that many Cuban-American voters are receptive to restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, including 68 percent in an F.I.U.poll and 79 percent in an Atlantic Council poll (although the sample was extremely small).

Perhaps the more telling evidence, though, is that Mr. Obama managed to make substantial gains among Cuban-Americans even though he was open to revising Cuba policy. Mr. Crist also ran on a more open Cuba policy and won the Cuban-American vote in the exit polls last month. The fact that Mr. Crist’s advisers thought it strategic to emphasize the issue may be an indication of what their polling data showed. The uninspired Republican response in prior campaigns may be telling in its own right. Republicans didn’t exactly blanket the Miami media market with ads about Mr. Obama’s Cuba policy, which might also be an indication of how they think the issue plays.

Tell that to Marco Rubio, who could very well run for president wearing this issue on his sleeve. Russell Berman doubts such a strategy would get him very far, though:

Polls show more and more Americans support normalizing relations with Cuba, and the trend even extends to Rubio’s cohort of Cuban-Americans. Rubio dismissed talk of the 2016 race on Wednesday, “out of respect for the gravity of the issue,” he said. And he didn’t have much to say about the polling, either. “This is not a political thing,” he said. “I don’t care if polls say the 99 percent of the people support normalizing relations with Cuba.” It’s a principled stand, sure, but it probably won’t make his increasingly arduous journey to the White House any easier.

Larison shakes his head at Rubio’s insistence that opening diplomatic channels with Cuba is beyond the pale:

It’s important to repeat again and again that establishing normal diplomatic relations is the bare minimum of engagement with another country. The U.S. maintains normal relations with all kinds of governments, including some of the very worst in the world. That isn’t because we approve of everything they do, nor is it because we are doing them any favors by having normal relations, but because this is the kind of relationship all governments seek to have with each other except in times of crisis or war. There is no good reason for the U.S. and Cuba not to have normal relations today, and so we should have them. If the U.S. refused to have normal relations with every state because of its authoritarian character or the abuses it has committed, as Rubio claims to want, it would have to shut down its embassies in half the countries around the world.

(Chart from Philip Bump.)