House less sinful than President

[nancylebov]

On July 1st, I posted about the all-around rottenness of Bush proposing to further restrict Cuban-American's permission to give things to their relatives in Cuba.

House Votes to Overturn Bush Rules on Cuba

The 221-194 vote was won by a coalition in which Democrats were joined by nearly four dozen farm-state and free-trade Republicans to rebuff the president. The vote came just four months from an Election Day in which Bush would like to once again win Florida, the pivotal state in his 2000 victory, by gaining the support of that state's Cuban-Americans.

I'm not sure this is an addition to my list of people who would normally be on Bush's side who he's been comprehensively pissing off, but the list is so long (free-market/small deficit/personal freedom Republicans, Cuban-Americans, libertarians, older people with some money who might benefit from stem cell research, the military) that I begin to wonder if he's trying to prove that God is on his side by showing that he can slob around and still win. I'm just about ready to bet that his next clever trick will be to put a special tax on Diebold.

Note: I don't think everyone on the list in parenthesis is opposed to Bush, nor that some of them wouldn't have been opposed to him anyway--it's just the Bush is changing the percentages.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I have my doubts about just what would win over Florida's Cuban-American community. When I visit my relatives in south Florida, the local papers almost always seem to have a Cuba story or two in them, and opinion in the Cuban-American community about what to do and how to handle those stories and situations is reported as split. (The only thing that seems to be true of the community is that the majority think Castro really needs to go. But even there, it's possible to find a tolerable fraction (20-25%?) of the community that disagrees.)

From what I can understand (being both outside the community and acquiring my information from secondary sources), much of the difference derives from whether an individual sees hirself as "Cuban" or "Cuban-American", and the designation continues at least into the second generation of immigrant. But in either event, I find it hard to believe that any candidate will acquire most of the votes of the community based on anything less than the ouster of the current regime in that group's homeland.

On quite another tack, taxing Diebold -- one of Bush's best friends to date -- would seem to be a bad move. Or a coverup. Not that I'd put either stupidity or cupidity past this unelected Administration, mind you. But there's probably a great number of other bad policy decisions to make and implement first.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reply--you've got more information than I do--I was just basing my opinions on a few NPR pieces, and they gave the impression that Cuban-Americans were more angry than not about the proposal to tighten the restricions.

That bit about taxing Diebold was intended as humorous exaggeration, not as a serious prediction.

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, the earlier generation of Cuban refugees support Bush's move, as they are so virulently anti-Castro that they will do *anything* to starve his government out of power.

The newer arrivals are less political about it, and more pragmatic, wanting to visit and monetarily support those of their relatives who are still in Cuba.

No easy answers here.