Don’t fall for Republicans’ partisan bluster, Miami. Biden takes wise action on Cuba | Opinion

Vowing that “this is just the beginning,” President Joe Biden popped the partisan bubble Florida’s Republicans are trying to build in Miami around the historic Cuba protests.

The Democrat kept all of ex-President Donald Trump’s sanctions against the Cuban regime intact — and added his own.

But no, Biden isn’t going to invade Cuba anymore than Trump invaded Venezuela.

No, Biden isn’t launching air strikes, as Miami’s Republican Cuban-American mayor, Francis Suarez, suggested he should consider in a flippant remark to the media.

The calls for military intervention are a made-in-Miami delusional distraction, oftentimes coming from desperate people who don’t know better; other times, it’s just partisan gibberish to stoke exile fires.

Don’t let Republican hot air confuse you, Miami.

Condemns sham trials

President Biden — who doesn’t care for dictators on either side of the political spectrum and speaks with a higher moral authority than the former Putin-loving occupant of the White House — isn’t mincing words.

“I unequivocally condemn the mass detentions and sham trials that are unjustly sentencing to prison those who dared to speak in an effort to intimidate and threaten the Cuban people into silence,” Biden said in a statement Thursday. “The Cuban people have the same right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly as all people.”

And, as important as calling attention to the brutal treatment of protesters by the Miguel Diaz-Canel regime, Biden followed the words with action.

Here’s what’s significant: Finally, we hear an energetic president, White House, and administration officials stepping up to the plate, delivering targeted, more comprehensive measures, and vowing that “the ongoing situation in Cuba is a top priority for the Biden-Harris Administration.”

Biden didn’t come to Florida to tout his agenda, as local and state Democrats wanted, a show of the same vote-canvassing art Republicans have perfected along with policy delivery. But he nevertheless held Cuban leaders accountable, denounced communism and called Cuba “a failed state.”

Biden takes action

He issued targeted sanctions against Cuban Defense Minister Álvaro López Miera and, like Trump did in January, also the Ministry of the Interior’s “Brigada Especial” — the special ops team seen on video cracking down with brutal force on protesters — under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.

The White House also outlined more significant action to come, including: restaffing the U.S. Embassy in Havana; partnering with the private sector to crack through government censorship and provide free internet to blacked-out Cuba; reviewing remittance procedures to ensure the Cuban people receive the humanitarian assistance, not the repressive government’s coffers.

“The United States stands with the Cuban people,” vowed a White House statement.

Biden condemns crackdown on protesters, orders sanctions against head of Cuban military

Last week, notable Democrats also joined Miami Republicans in a strong bicameral, bipartisan resolution condemning the regime’s violent response to the protests, including Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Tim Kaine of Virginia, who — before the July 11 protests — were supporters of lifting the embargo.

“We are seeing decades of deep Cuban frustration over inept, corrupt and cruel governance boiling over. While I have long argued for a change in the failed U.S. policy toward Cuba, the Cuban people know the real source of their island’s lost potential rests squarely with the ruling dictatorship,” Durbin said.

And he added: “On this 9th anniversary of Cuban democracy activist Oswaldo Payá’s suspicious death, I stand with the Cuban people in their peaceful demand for a brighter future.”

Still, every Republican who has made a television appearance in Miami keeps parroting what seems to be the party line: “It’s not enough.”

The Biden administration also has been meeting with Cuban Americans with Cuba policy experience, including Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, who described others in the meetings as “people on and off the island who help promote democracy, human rights and civil society in Cuba.”

“The message today could not be clearer . . . there will be consequences for those with blood on their hands,” the senator said. “President Biden’s concrete actions demonstrate that his administration — and all us who believe in a democratic Cuba — are of one voice, not divided by personal politics, but united by a deep belief that the people of Cuba should be free to choose how they live and who governs them.”

If only the latter were true in Miami.

Miami was “one voice” on July 11 as tens of thousands of Cubans from one end of the island to the other bravely took to the streets.

But the political fissures surfaced when the hate group Proud Boys made its presence felt on Calle Ocho, mammoth “TRUMP WON” flags were unfurled where there had been a sea of Cuban ones, and a ridiculous Sean Hannity show spectacle was staged at Versailles.

Instead of the attention going to Cuba, the circus became a Trump rally and a slam-Biden festival.

It was an invitation for the Cuba cause to lose supporters, thanks to politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who continue to build political capital on the suffering — and now too, the blood — of the Cuban people.

Cuba shouldn’t be anybody’s political football, but in Florida, playing the who’s-tougher-on-Cuba game is a full-blown sport.

Fortunately for the cause of a free Cuba, Biden is playing on the right team: that of the Cuban people.