MSNBC seems hell bent on making sure it's not entirely liberal. The "both sides do it" network allocates five straight hours of their morning line-up to Republican hosts. We know that Joe Scarborough is a die hard Republican with Mika meekly concurring with everything he says. Since Chuck "It's Not My Job" Todd left The Daily Rundown to ask softball questions on Meet The Press, the MSNBC hierarchy decided to give Florida Republican Jose Diaz Balart two full hours of their weekday programming.
Today, he interviewed fellow Republican and Florida's 27th District House member, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She bemoaned the president for renewing diplomatic relations with her birthplace, Cuba. She's against anything that will help the repressive Cuban regime, even though the last half-century of American-Cuban relations has not hurt the government at all, it has just made the lives of Cuban citizens much more difficult.
Indeed it has. Our country's posture and policy toward Cuba has been a miserable failure for the past half-century that has done nothing to loosen the grip of an autocratic despotic regime over its own people. Keep in mind that re-establishing diplomatic ties and other actions do not in any way lift the trade embargo, which needs to be done by Congress. Obama is in no way abusing his power as president in anything he's doing here.
But of course, Ileana disagrees. She's a member of the party that calls the duly elected President Obama a tyrant and a despot. She tells Diaz-Balart,
It's a good deal for American tourists maybe who want cheaper rum and cheaper cigars, and maybe that's what's driving this conversation. But I think it's about freedom, it's about respect for human rights and the president is not going to help the Cuban people get there...We should listen to the dissidents who say that this is not the way to get there.
Why would the Republican party want to get rid of one of their pet fearmongering lies? Conservatism, as a defense of the status quo, needs “Others” to demonize. Cuba has been a “cherished” other for many decades. The Party of No would never admit their hypocrisy.
Why is the Communist regime in Vietnam okay and Cuba is not? Because Cubans are the last Hispanic group that leans Republican, but that too will change when the eldest Cuban-Americans die out. Most Cuban-Americans agree that we should end the ridiculous embargo, but they aren't the ones who are clamoring the loudest. Leave that to the party of willful ignorance and cognitive dissidence, the Republicans.
