The GOP Should Own the Cuba Issue. It May Help them Win — If They're Smart.

This past summer, the Godforsaken imprisoned island of Cuba was rocked by the biggest protests in a generation, and the crazy thing is Cubans are still protesting . . . without being arrested!

In cities across that small Caribbean island, the people who have lived under Communist rule since 1959 are rising up against the ineptitude of their government. Meanwhile stateside, Cubans gathered en masse to demand Joe Biden do something about it, including a mass gathering in front of the White House.

Joe Biden is, of course, too stupid to do anything about Cuba, but that means Republicans can do something about it instead. Plus, he agrees with the people’s taskmasters.

Republicans however have the golden opportunity to galvanize Cuban support both in Florida and across the nation. Even among Democrats, only the farthest of the far Left are pretending that Cubans are upset over our longstanding embargo of the island.

But if Republicans don’t act now, they could squander this chance to be the leaders on a cause that’s a solid home run for most Americans.

After all, they are known as the “Stupid Party.”

To be sure, there are individual Republicans who have rallied to the cause. The Florida GOP in particular (Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Maria Salazar to name a few) have jumped on the Cuba issue, and rightly so.

But the bulk of conservatives aren’t moving fast enough, in part because they are still stuck on litigating the outcome of the 2020 election.

Conservatives, I have news for you: 2020 is over. Forget it. It’s done.

Now is not the time to worry about the past.

What the party should worry about is the present, and the very urgent need to show our support for the Cuban people, plant their flag with the Cuban-American community, and use the issue to beat Democrats into a bloody pulp next year.

There are such possibilities.

Republican leaders could travel to Cuba much like they recently did to the southern border to highlight the immigration crisis. At the very least, they could rent a large boat and hold a press conference on the edge of our territorial waters.

Bar that, they could charter planes to drop supplies and pocket constitutions and leaflets and medical kits and candies and morale boosting supplies to Cubans on the ground, much like the Berlin Airlift over Germany.

The GOP could afford all this by the way with the fundraising they’ve had this year, and at every turn they could showcase what they’re doing versus the lack of action from the White House.

On the home front, the GOP needs to be meeting and talking to Cuban-American leaders constantly, if they aren’t already, to drill home the fact that Republicans agree with the protesters in Cuba and Democrats don’t.

We need to remind them every waking moment that the far Left thinks Cubans are upset because of our embargo when Cuba could easily trade with numerous other countries. Every ad they run, every mailer they send out, and every speech they give should include a tidbit about how their candidates support a free Cuba and the liberal Democrats don’t.

Republicans also need to be laying out comprehensive foreign policy plans for the Caribbean they can not only campaign on but put into action should they take back the House and Senate in 2022.

They can’t have a repeat of Obamacare where party leaders bleat about repealing for nearly a decade but provide no viable alternative.

They are the party of Reagan, the party of ideas, and they can’t look like fools to the Cubans who have already been let down by elites such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi.

While they’re at it, add plans to address the issues in South and Central America to go after the other Communist paradise known as Venezuela and the attempts by China to exert its influence in our hemisphere.

This is a much more sensible foreign policy guide versus more endless wars in the Middle East.

Why fight on the other side of the world when there’s plenty of problems right here in our backyard?

As someone who years ago consulted and advised for many Republican campaigns, I cannot stress enough how easy of a win this could be.

It doesn’t hurt that Florida, where most Cuban-Americans live, has more or less become the center of Republican politics post-2020.

Sloppy Joe Biden and the current incarnation of the Democratic Party won’t do squat for Cuba. If Republicans have sense, they’ll step up to the plate and knock the issue out of the park.

Do that, and they can certainly shore up their chances of knocking the Democrats out of office.