Ethnomoronic Mormon: For all his touted smarts and political savvy, Mitt Romney really laid a boner here in Miami during a recent speech where he was trying — some say way too hard — to court the notoriously conservative Cuban-American vote. Besides sprinkling his speech with “Libertad, libertad, libertad” like a drunk priest slinging holy water, and mangling several Cuban-American politicians’ names like JKimmy Durante on crack, Romney casually used one of Fidel Castro’s favorite closers like a drunk who swaps one joke’s punchline for another’s — with similar effect.
According to the Miami Herald:
People chuckled when presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon raised in Michigan and elected in Massachusetts, bungled the names of Cuban-American politicians during a recent speech in Miami.
But when he mistakenly associated Fidel Castro’s trademark speech-ending slogan — Patria o muerte, venceremos! — with a free Cuba, listeners didn’t laugh. They winced.
Castro has closed his speeches with the phrase — in English, ”Fatherland or death, we shall overcome” — for decades.
Despite the fact that Romney has Al Cárdenas, a Cuban immigrant who is a well-known Miami lawyer and former Florida GOP campaign chair, he still screwed up, like so many before him. The Republicans think they need the Cuban voter base of South Florida to win the state, and they are embarrassingly unembarrassed about sucking up to people for whom “politics” and “corruption” are virtual synonyms, and for whom the only reason to enter politics is for the power and the perks. “Service” never really enters into it.
So, though it’s too late to save Mitt from making an ass of himself, and since the pilgrimage to the Versaille Restaurant in Little Havana has become as ubiquitous a part of Repug campaigns as baby-kissing, here are a few suggestions to other pols seeking to get an “in” with the South Florida Cuban-American faction:
1. Don’t hyphenate “Cuban American”; they don’t.
2. Don’t call them Latinos, they prefer Hispanic or Cuban American (no hyphen).
3. If you decide to step onto the slippery slope of incorporating Spanish quotations or expressions in your speech, remember not to use expressions from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, the barrios of California or Spanish Harlem.
4. Don’t make wisecracks about Desi Arnaz, José Martà or the movie “Scarface.”
5. Do praise Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Gloria Estefan and Andy Garcia.
6. Don’t try to dance the salsa or the rhumba. You’ll look silly and someone could get hurt.
7. Do try to eat whatever Cuban food they put in front of you, no matter how disgusting it may look or smell.
8. When they serve you cafe con leche, remember to pour the black stuff (coffee) into the white stuff (steamed milk). If you do it the other way, it will explode.
9. Do try to play dominoes for a photo op, but don’t try to win.
10. Never, ever show up for an official function dressed in a guayabera shirt.
Glad you remembered the guayabera! I would have made that #1.
Get the actual facts right people…
Here is what Romney said verbatim:
Romney: “I said at the outset that the threat in Latin America is unprecedented. I say that because the Castros have a second tyrant and he has great wealth, from oil. We must stand just as firm against caudillos like Hugo Chavez, tutored by Fidel Castro. Chavez and Castro are brothers in blood, intent on personal gratification at the expense of their people. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have stolen the phrase – ‘Patria o muerte, venceremos.’ This phrase should not be used by dictators, but by liberators.
“There are two spheres of influence in the Western Hemisphere. One is dark, bellicose and spreads misery by denying people basic freedoms; the other shines like a powerful light, is peaceful and wants only for its people to live in liberty and prosper.
Me: From what I see it says that DICTATORS shouldn’t be using this phrase and that it should be used by LIBERATORS.
What’s the deal? Sounds like some propaganda from the left to me.
A bunch of sheep is what you all are if you take what the media gives you and regurgitate it.
Yo, Gladiator, Romney’s cute turn of phrase might play somewhere north of Fort Lauderdale, but down here, one does not quote Castro when addressing a Cuban-American crowd unless one is quoting his last words, which he has yet to utter. And “Fatherland or death” sounds like the kind of “liberation” we’re practicing in Iraq, anyway. The point of the post was that politicians with no effing concept of the local politics — which I hazard to assert is very different from anywhere else in the nation — trot out a few choice Spanish phrases and think that earns them votes.
Yo Yoda:
Ironic it is when a Dittohead calls us sheep.
You are all sheep!
There is nothing but strength of character in what Romney said.
But some will always be playing the old Alpha 66 game of pretending they are patriots and playing dominoes while boasting of imaginary attempts at bringing down Castro. (Yawn)
Typical responses from the Banana Republic.