Huckabee changes his stance on Cuba

Huckabee changes his stance on Cuba
Candidate favors trade embargo he opposed in 2002
By Peter Wallsten | Los Angeles Times
December 12, 2007

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 has vowed to outdo even President Bush in strangling the
regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro and punishing those who do
business there.

The change of heart is 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 reflects 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 on Monday came 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 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 re-election as governor of Arkansas," he said. "I've got to look at
this as an issue that touches the whole country."

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, Fred 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. Rubio said his decision was based largely on Huckabee's new views
on Cuba.

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 who 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."

The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Co. newspaper.

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