[Marxism] God changes mind, tells Huckabee to support, tighten Cuba bloclade

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Cuban Embargo Switch Echoes Huckabee's Immigration Shift
By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times

http://www.agweekly.com/articles/2007/12/14/news/ag_news/news28.txt

MIAMI - As governor of Arkansas five years ago, Mike Huckabee joined a
bipartisan chorus of politicians who concluded that the U.S. trade embargo
against Cuba was bad for businesses. Now that he's a top-tier candidate for
president, Huckabee has decided he favors the embargo -so much so that he
vowed Monday to outdo even President Bush in strangling the regime of Cuban
President Fidel Castro and punishing those who do business there.

It was a change of heart sure to please hard-liners among the Cuban exiles
who could make up 10 percent or more of the electorate in Florida's Jan. 29
Republican primary. But it also reflected the latest move by a once-obscure
candidate now grappling with how to transform a burst of momentum into a
sustainable bid for the White House.

Huckabee's Cuba flip-flop comes just days after he released a hard-line plan
on illegal immigration described as "radical" by some of the same immigrant
advocates who once lauded him for more liberal views. As governor, Huckabee
supported in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants and
stood up for illegal workers caught in a raid of a meat-packing plant. Now
he wants all illegal immigrants to return to their native countries within
120 days.

Huckabee all but acknowledged the political expediency of his shifting views
as he stood Monday in a Cuban restaurant here and explained why he wrote a
letter to Bush in 2002 describing how the Cuba trade embargo was hurting
Arkansas rice growers.

"Rather than seeing it as some huge change, I would call it, rather, the
simple reality that I'm running for president of the United States, not for
reelection as governor of Arkansas," he said. "I've got to look at this as
an issue that touches the whole country."

Huckabee has rocketed to the front of the GOP pack by emphasizing his roots
as a plain-spoken Southern Baptist preacher with staunchly conservative
views. A CNN survey released Monday puts him in a statistical tie nationally
with GOP front-runner Rudolph W. Giuliani -ahead of rivals former
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Sen.
Fred Thompson of Tennessee.

But Huckabee's evolving views on certain issues are giving his foes some
ammunition as they try to halt his rise.

On Monday in Miami, Thompson criticized Huckabee for changing his stance on
Cuba "on a dime to appeal to a particular group of people right before an
election," according to the Associated Press.

The night before -when the GOP candidates jockeyed to appear toughest on
Castro during a debate on the Spanish-language network Univision -Thompson's
campaign gave reporters quotes from Huckabee's 2002 letter. Thompson had
hoped to win support from the social conservatives now flocking to Huckabee.

Huckabee on Monday won an endorsement from Marco Rubio, Florida's Cuban
American state House speaker, handing the upstart candidate instant cache in
a community that some of his rivals have been courting for years. He said
his decision was based largely on Huckabee's new views on Cuba.

Rubio, who has been wooed by all the major GOP candidates, said he decided
to back Huckabee after searching for "someone that will fight for what they
truly believe in the depths of their heart."

The letter Huckabee wrote in 2002 reportedly argued that the embargo
"continues to harm our own agricultural and business interests here at home
and has certainly not helped the people of Cuba."

His views Monday were equally firm in the opposite direction, as he vowed,
if elected president, to veto any effort to end the sanctions.

Huckabee pledged to adhere to provisions of a 1996 law that would permit
U.S. citizens to sue in American courts for property taken from them during
the 1959 Cuban revolution. Those lawsuits could threaten European merchants
that do business on the island and have holdings that exiles could argue
belong to them. Bush and former President Clinton routinely have avoided
conflict on the issue by suspending those provisions of the 1996 law.

"I really wasn't that aware of a lot of the issues that exist between Cuba
and the United States," Huckabee said Monday, adding that his flexibility on
policy should be viewed as a good thing. "I'll be the first to tell you I'm
always subject -and I hope we all are -to learning, to growing, and never
being so stubborn and maybe bull-headed."

Huckabee appears to be applying that same approach to his views on
immigration, another issue that is important to conservative voters in early
Republican contests and an area where he is being attacked by his opponents.

Like former New York Mayor Giuliani, Huckabee has long been viewed with
admiration among advocates for immigrants. He supported legislation two
years ago in Arkansas that would have given in-state tuition to certain
children of illegal immigrants.

And two years ago he reacted with outrage after federal agents raided an
Arkadelphia, Ark., poultry plant and arrested and deported many of its
Mexican workers. Huckabee was incensed that federal authorities had
separated many parents from their children, and he called for a White House
investigation.

"Our first priority should be to secure our borders. I'm less threatened by
people who cross the line to make beds, pick tomatoes, or pluck chickens as
I am by people like those in Canada making 3-ton bombs," he said in an
e-mail to the Los Angeles Times last year. "While we should certainly
enforce the law, we need to prioritize." He called in the e-mail for a
"process that avoids amnesty, but does provide a path for workers to become
legal by paying a fine, getting in the back of the line to register."

But Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an
immigrant rights group, said he was stunned last week when Huckabee released
a new plan calling for all illegal workers to register with federal
authorities and return to their native countries within 120 days.

Those who did would face no penalty, under Huckabee's plan, if they later
applied to immigrate to or visit the United States. Those who did not return
home would be barred, when caught, from future reentry to the United States
for 10 years.

"To me, it's like night and day," Sharry said. "One day he's saying children
of (illegal) immigrants should go to college, and the next day he's saying
there should be mass expulsion."

Huckabee on Monday said his anger over the Arkadelphia raid stemmed from
local authorities not being informed in advance so they could make
preparations for the young children who were to be left alone when their
parents were arrested and deported. Often, illegal workers have children who
were born on U.S. soil and are therefore citizens.

He said raiding a business employing "vast amounts" of illegal workers was a
"legitimate thing to do" as long as local officials knew in advance.





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