There’s nothing new about politicians embellishing their biographies to ingratiate themselves with voters. Most notable in this respect are men who fabricate military experience – complete with battlefield heroics. And, remarkably enough, they often suffer very little, if any, consequence – as former Connecticut attorney general, now U.S. senator, Richard Blumenthal, can attest.
But I suspect Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is the first politician in U.S. history to fabricate a story about his family being among the many exiles who fled Castro’s Cuba. Because after spending years repeatedly touting and, more to the point, benefiting from his solidarity with Florida’s exile community, it turns out that he’s no more of an exile than I am.
For example, he even had the gall to write in his official Senate biography that his family fled Cuba in 1959 after Fidel Castro seized power and began the reign of terror that forced so many Cubans into exile. But here is how the St. Petersburg Times exposed this plainly ingratiating lie in yesterday’s edition:
On May 18, 1956, Mario and Oriales Rubio walked into the American Consulate in Havana and applied for immigrant visas. The form asked how long they intended to stay in the United States. ‘Permanently’, Mr. Rubio answered.
The discovered documents verifying this account is what we call, a smoking gun. For it makes clear that Rubio’s parents were not exiles, but just like the parents of ordinary immigrant-Americans whose parents simply left their homes in the Caribbean (and elsewhere) to seek a better life in the United States.
I appreciate, of course, that this might seem like a distinction without a difference to anyone who is not a Cuban exile. Therefore, to put it into a little perspective, just imagine a politician lying about being one of the lucky few who escaped from the Twin Towers after the terrorist strikes that brought them down on 9/11.
Well, given the hundreds of thousands who died in Cuba or escaped with just the clothes on their backs after Castro took over, Rubio lying about being a Cuban exile is a thousand times worse.
Accordingly, far from being the latter-day Moses who would deliver Hispanic voters from Democrats to Republicans, I suspect Rubio will soon find himself being treated like a latter-day leper who neither political party wants to touch with a 10-foot pole. Not to mention that the real Cuban exiles might really force him into exile now – from Florida – for exploiting their suffering throughout his career so shamelessly.
The Hispanic Obama? Fugetaboutit!