With the Polls Against Them, Cuban-American Republicans Stick to the Laws Against Trade with Cuba
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen speaks during the Oxfam Sisters on the Planet Summit awards ceremony & reception at the Rayburn House Office Building on March 7, 2012 in Washington
Photographer: Kris Connor/Getty ImagesA few months ago, when few Americans outside the Obama administration knew of negotiations to start normalizing relations with Cuba, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen told me that the embargo was here to stay. She waved off a question about polling that found Americans were increasingly ready to let the embargo end.
"That was such a loaded question," she said, referring to the most recent polling. Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban-American elected to Congress–and briefly, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee–insisted that voters were responding not to the embargo, but to the idea of taking Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terror. "They've given up on the embargo because we've codified it. It's now law. They now have to go through Congress."