Ben Smith writes of Marco Rubio’s closing ad:
It’s a powerful spot, but a bit confusing. Rubio’s parents fled Cuba after Communist takeover, and the many problems with the Castro regime don’t include that it’s a society “pretty much like every other in the world.” It’s unclear to me whether he’s warning that Obama is turning America into a class-based society like pre-revolutionary Cuba, or into a classless, socialist one.
UPDATE: Rubio aide Alex Burgos suggests he means pre-revolutionary Cuba: “Marco’s own words answer your question: ‘my parents were born into a society pretty much like every other in the world.'” (Elsewhere in the ad, he refers to the place they “came from.”)
This may be the first time Barack Obama has been compared to Fulgencio Batista.
UPDATE: Rubio aide Alex Burgos suggests he means pre-revolutionary Cuba: “Marco’s own words answer your question: ‘my parents were born into a society pretty much like every other in the world.'” (Elsewhere in the ad, he refers to the place they “came from.”)
This may be the first time Barack Obama has been compared to Fulgencio Batista.
Rubio is obviously walking a fine line here with his warning the United States could become more like, not just like, Cuba–whether under Batista or Castro. But he’s not the first to walk that line. From Ronald Reagan’s 1964 “A Time for Choosing”:
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: [up] man’s old — old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: [up] man’s old — old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
Goldwater went on to lose in a landslide, and LBJ got his Great Society. But “The Speech” was an important stepping stone on Reagan’s own path to the presidency.
