Yesterday’s debate between David Rivera, Republican Florida State Representative, and Joe Garcia, former executive director of the Cuban-American National Foundation, on CNN was nothing short of a good old-fashioned left-wing beat-down of the conservative on national television. Forget the facts, forget fairness, and forget the truth, Joe Garcia (Enron Joe, nickname he picked up during a failed run for the US House of Representatives) and Roland Martin, the host, took turns firing shots at Rivera and the hard-line position with the same old liberal slogans. The debate was going okay until Rivera committed the mortal sin in our current political climate: he criticized president Obama. Unfortunately, Rivera misspoke and said that Obama promised to bow down to dictators, he later corrected himself after Martin pressed him. True, Obama did not promise he would bow to dictators… he actually did:

At least he didn’t kiss the monarch’s feet. America was forged in the fires of a war against monarchy and tyranny… bowing to monarchs is not an American value and should never be.

Back to the debate. The main issue is what Rivera identified during the debate: Obama unilaterally eased restrictions without any concessions from the other side. Obama’s response to tyranny seems to be to give in to demands without preconditions. Garcia’s position, boosted by the apparent and stated bias of host Roland Martin (before the guests appeared, he asked if US-Cuba policy was contradictory/hypocritical), was the same old line that this is a failed policy. To his credit, he delivered his position with relative clarity and Garcia even got to whack the big, bright political piñata that is the Bush administration. The blogosphere is touting Garcia’s victory over David Rivera… and sadly, I must agree. It does not take a lot of mental gymnastics to support a policy that targets dictators, contains communism, and takes a moral stand against human rights violators, but it looks like Rivera was not up to the task. On the other hand, it is much harder to defend Obama’s unilateral action that effectively puts billions of dollars into dictators’ pockets, but Garcia’s many years of infiltrating Cuban-American politics with his brand of double-speak, that ultimately justifies incremental surrender, was more than able to defend the policy of giving funds to Castro. Sad.

The communist dictators do not want to concede anything and won’t. Yesterday, a religious watchdog organization was denied visas to Cuba, even after Obama eased restrictions. The regime doesn’t want anyone on the island that will actually report on the state of human rights, they only want tourists and American dollars.

My position is to strangle the regime and directly fund the pro-democracy groups on the island, neither can work alone. It is pitiful that the liberal elements have been able to keep Cuba policy at mere half-measures… and now they are using the failure of these half-measures as justification for completely capitulating to the communist regime’s demands. It’s no surprise that Joe Garcia’s Cuban-American National Foundation has stopped taking a tough stand against Castro… the Cuban-American community should send a message to this organization that a policy that treats the dictators nicely is not in the best interest of freedom… and that Enron Joe has got to go.

-AG