ANALYSIS: Cuba, the not-so-secret weapon of Republicans in Florida

By Silvia Ayuso Jan 30, 2012, 5:06 GMT

Washington - When it comes to gaining votes in Florida, a tried and true method has always been to talk tough on Cuba: however old the tactic, it always seems to work, and Republican presidential hopefuls know that.

Aware that Tuesday's Florida primary may prove decisive for their White House aspirations, GOP frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have spared no anti-Castro slogans or criticism of US President Barack Obama's soft-handed Cuban policy.

The Miami Herald didn't even need an editorial to sum up the state of affairs. A caricature, showing Romney and Gingrich energetically jumping on an effigy of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, did the trick Friday.

'Look! I'm stomping on Fidel harder than he is,' says a cartoon drawing of Romney.

'Baloney! He's a fake stomper! I'm the real stomper,' Gingrich retorts.

A weary-looking couple looks on: 'Going after the Hispanic vote again,' the cartoon says.

Indeed, talk on the economy, jobs and even personal attacks have given way to a priority issue: showing the will to shake a fist at Fidel and his brother and successor, Cuban President Raul Castro.

'If I'm president of the United States, I will use every resource we have, short of invasion and military action...to make sure that when Fidel Castro finally leaves this planet, that we are able to help the people of Cuba enjoy freedom,' Romney vowed late Thursday.

Gingrich countered: 'It's amazing that Barack Obama is worried about an Arab Spring...and he cannot bring himself to look south and imagine a Cuban Spring.'

The rhetoric is hardly surprising: Florida's Latino community comprises 13.1 per cent of the state's 11.2 million registered voters. What's more, 32 per cent of Florida's Hispanics are from its decades-old Cuban-American community, according to the Pew Hispanic Centre.

A large chunk Florida's Cuban community consider themselves anti-Castro exiles, as shown by the state's Congressional representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Marco Rubio, and the Diaz-Balart brothers, all of whom are of Cuban descent and radically anti-Castro.

It is no wonder that GOP candidates, particularly Romney and Gingrich, have shown support for the group, trying to bring the point home by visiting the Versailles restaurant, the heart of the anti-Castro movement in Miami's Little Havana.

'If a candidate so much as mentions any kind of lifting a sanction or closeness to the Cuban regime, I'm telling you, that election is lost,' journalist Ninoska Perez, of the anti-Castro Radio Mambi, told CNN.

And yet times could be changing.

According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, the percentage of Florida Hispanics registered as Republicans has declined since 2006, when they were a majority. Nowadays, Democrats lead by more than 110,000.

And in a sign that the effectiveness of anti-Castro rhetoric could start to fade, candidate Ron Paul received unexpected applause Thursday when he distanced himself from his rivals and called for change in a policy that has failed for over half a century to deliver the desired results in Cuba.

'The Cuba issue, as important as it is to Cuban-Americans, I don't think it's dictating who they're going to vote for,' Tony Jimenez, founder of the NGO Roots of Hope, which seeks to bring together young people from Florida and Cuba, told CNN. 'More and more each day, people are more concerned with the economy.'

But judging by the campaign orientation of the candidates, that is still not a majority position. For that reason, at least until Tuesday, the message 'bring down Fidel,' which has worked so well in Florida for 50 years, will prevail.