It's twenty times better than the
Duck Dynasty guy, so sure.
Do that.
Sen. Marco Rubio is sending a message to President Obama about his policy toward Cuba by inviting the daughter of a well-known activist who fought the Castro regime to the State of the Union Address.
Rubio announced that Rosa Maria Payá will be his guest in the House gallery as Obama speaks to the nation tonight. Her father, Oswaldo Payá, was a noted human rights activist who gained international acclaim for the Varela Project, which petitioned Fidel Castro's government in Cuba to guarantee freedom of speech and assembly and to institute a democracy.
Oswaldo Payá died in 2012 in a car crash; his family and others
suspect foul play and have demanded an independent investigation. Rubio has been a fierce critic of Obama's move to partially normalize relations with Cuba, a
minority opinion among Americans and
even among Cuban Americans. He has vowed to undermine the proposed reforms, and his invitation to Payá is meant as "message":
"While I disagree with the president's new Cuba policy, I hope Rosa Maria Payá's presence on Tuesday night will at least remind him that her father's murderers have not been brought to justice, and that the U.S. is now, in fact, sitting at the table with them," Rubio said in a statement. "I hope the administration takes the opportunity to demand reforms and changes in Cuban behavior before relations are normalized."
I think there are few persons that do not want substantive changes in Cuban behavior; the only argument is how to get those changes. Both experts and the general public are increasingly convinced that the status quo has not helped to facilitate those changes, and so Obama should be praised for trying that boldest of all possible Washington approaches: "something else."