Romney: And Yet It Moves … but Backwards

They say that the Inquisition’s agents only had to show Galileo their instruments for him to abandon his geocentric theory, but in a hushed voice, the wise Italian assumed the good sense of passing down his famous alleged utterance “and yet it moves” to future generations.

It went slightly differently for U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney before the radio inquisition in Miami. Romney went straight for pleasing extremists by answering Miami’s Radio Mambí reporter Carlos Santana’s question, “Could you please make clear the position that the Romney-Ryan administration would have towards Cuba?” Without question, he deleted the record of Paul Ryan, his candidate to the vice presidency, in votes against the blockade and in favor of travel to Cuba. “I am in favor of maintaining the embargo relative to Cuba and I support the Helms-Burton Act. Congressman Ryan has allied himself with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Representative Diaz-Balart. They convinced him that the embargo is an important effort in order to put pressure on the Cuban government. So it’s an important factor in legislation. Congressman Ryan voted ‘No’ [on lifting sanctions] and his position is the same as mine – he wants to strengthen our policy towards the regime of Cuba.”

But his convincing friends from Miami repaid Mr. Romney poorly. Shortly after concluding his talks with Radio Mambí, fellow members of Congress Ros-Lehtinen, Díaz-Balart and Marco Rubio made him appear in the establishment of a man convicted of drug trafficking. Reinaldo Bermudéz, who spent three years in prison after being found guilty in an operation led by the DEA that seized 1.2 tons of drugs, enthusiastically welcomed the presidential candidate into his Palacio de los Jugos (The Juice Palace), famous for being a meeting point for smugglers of Cuban emigrants.

With the choice between the coffee of the Versailles restaurant (a place of tribute to terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles, whose owner has declared himself a supporter of President Obama), and the “Palace” of a drug trafficker that takes in human smugglers, Romney’s fellow Republicans in Florida opted to reward the latter for the embargo. This is despite a survey carried out by the Cuban Research Institute on the Cuban-Americans of Miami, which shows that 80 percent of them consider the blockade dysfunctional, around 75 percent support the sales of food and medicine, 57 percent support unrestricted trips and 61 percent oppose any law that restricts this possibility. Meanwhile, 58 percent defend the restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.

“I am a big fan of mango, papaya and guava,” Romney told Radio Mambí, but his friends from Miami have made him seem like a big fan of cocaine and a big enemy of the wishes of the majority of the Cuban-Americans living in that city.