Normally, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the 10-term Republican from South Florida’s 18th District, is known for her hardball politics and her Cuban-exile- community clique.
For a while last week, she was nationally known for her click. As in the sound of a phone being summarily hung up. As in President-elect Barack Obama being on the other end of the line. As in Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, being on the other end of the next call.
It finally took yet another call – from Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee — to persuade Ros-Lehtinen that Obama was really wanting to talk to her. And would try again. The third time was, if not the charm, at least the clincher.
Ros-Lehtinen, in her defense, explained that she thought it was a hoax. That she was being “punked” by an Obama imitator. And in all fairness, such hoaxes – typically the work of talk-radio pranksters — are hardly unknown in the Miami area.
Two points:
First, if Obama is calling a foreign-policy obstructionist like Ros-Lehtinen, he’s truly serious about reaching across the aisle. Ros-Lehtinen is a major reach.
Second, when it comes to hoaxes, this state and these United States have been getting punked for a generation by Ros-Lehtinen and her Cuban embargo-supporting, Congressional cohorts, Carlos and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. For them, the U.S. relationship with Cuba is personal. For them, what’s in the best interest of the United States is subordinate to what the Little Havana vendetta crowd wants.