Redstate

Cuban Americans in Florida see through Obama's Rhetoric

By Kevin Holtsberry Posted in 2008 — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It will not come as news to RS readers, but Barack Obama, the supposed candidate of Hope and Change, has an awful lot of connections to the same old failed personalities and policies of the past. Jim Johnson went under the bus because his history clashed with Obama's self-righteous denunciations on the mortgage crisis. But there are a number of suspect characters still left advising the presumptive Democratic nominee. Eric Holder and Greg Craig for example.

And it seems the Cuban American community in Florida doesn't appreciate it:

Summoning a time of political upheaval in Miami, a great-uncle of Elián González plans Friday to publicly denounce two Barack Obama campaign advisors who helped send the boy back to his father in Cuba eight years ago.

One day before the expected Democratic nominee addresses a conference of mayors in Miami, Delfín González will hold a 1 p.m. news conference outside the Little Havana home where Elián lived with relatives for several months in 2000.

[. . .]

At issue are foreign-policy advisor Greg Craig, who represented Elián's father in the custody battle with the Miami relatives, and legal advisor Eric Holder, a member of Obama's vice-presidential search committee who was deputy attorney general when the 6-year-old boy was seized by federal agents and returned to Cuba.

''We're going to express opposition to Barack Obama's visit to Miami, and explain how we're opposed to him having individuals on his campaign who were associated with Elián's seizure in 2000,'' González said. ``Some wounds are so deep that they do not heal over time, such as taking a child and sealing his fate to a communist dictatorship.''

Craig isn't afraid of taking on controversial cases:

He defended John Hinkley, Jr. after the latter’s attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. He defended former Bolivian Defense Minister Carlos Sanchez-Berzain, a human rights violator accused of 67 deaths. He was a “personal attorney” for Kofi Annan in the UN Oil for Food scandal and he provided “special counsel” to Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial. Currently, high powered attorney Greg Craig of the DC-based Williams and Connolly law firm, is defending Pedro Miguel Gonzales, President of the Panamanian legislature, accused of murdering U.S. Army Sgt. Zak Hernandez.

And of course, Holder played a key role in the pardon of Marc Rich, among others, in addition to his work in sending Elian back to Cuba

For more read on.

So how does the Obama campaign react to the justified objection the folks in Florida have toward Obama choosing advisors such as Craig and Holder? They do what they always do, change the subject:

Asked to respond to the concerns about Obama's advisors, campaign spokesman Josh Earnest issued a statement that focused more on the candidate's proposal to change U.S. policy toward Cuba.

''Senator Obama -- like the vast majority of voters -- is looking to the future, not the past, which is why he believes we should both: keep the embargo to pressure the Cuban government to respect human rights and lift travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans so that families can visit and support one other,'' he said.

Just another "distraction" I guess. Watch this CNN video on the subject and see if you can spot an answer from Obama's camp:

Just more disappointment that people dare attack Obama and no real explanation for his willingness to be associated with these two gentlemen.

Our own Soren Dayton was calling for Craig to be fired back in May and Holder has been under fire as well yet the Obama campaign continues to ignore the issue and pretend it doesn't exist.

It seems to me that the only conclusion to draw from all of this is that Obama simply doesn't care. He assumes that he can get away with the massive cognitive dissonance of his campaign for a "new politics" while being advised by characters like Greg Craig and Eric Holder.

Delfín González disagrees and is making his voice heard. It is up to the voters of Florida to prove González right and Obama wrong.