The news that President Obama has called for the United States to "normalize relations" with Cuba, including allowing trade and tourism, is a massive change. He's also started the process of establishing an American embassy in Havana for the first time since 1961, which, USA Today points out, is the year Obama was born. The president read a statement this morning announcing, in part, that he "will end an outdated approach that has failed to advance our interests... These 50 years have shown isolation has not worked." According to the Atlantic, most Americans agree. Though polls indicate that Americans are not at all fond of the Castro brothers, a majority of us have been in favor of lifting the embargo since 1999. Even Floridians and Cuban Americans are in favor of loosening the stone wall of silence between the US and Cuba.

But Republicans are against it. Specifically, presidential hopeful and Florida senator Marco Rubio is standing athwart the thawing of Cuba-US relations and hollering "stop." Rubio promised that when he takes his seat as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee this January, he will "make every effort to block this dangerous and desperate attempt by the president to burnish his legacy at the Cuban people’s expense." He predicts that after this move, "America will be less safe," and he calls Obama "the worst negotiator that we’ve had as president… maybe in the modern history of the country.” He does go on: "When America is unwilling to advocate for individual liberty and freedom of political expression 90 miles from our shores, it represents a terrible setback for the hopes of all oppressed people around the globe.”

Rubio also just said on CNN that "You can't point to a single example in human history... where more economic trade has led to a democratic opening." Which seems like an odd thing for a free-market-loving Republican to say, doesn't it? For one thing, he's wrong. To pick one example at random, you could argue that the loosening of economic control in the Soviet Union, including trade, led to the collapse of the Iron Curtain. And for another thing, shouldn't a taste of that sweet, sweet American freedom (in the form of flat-screen TVs, Netflix, and Apple Watches) inspire those evil commies to fall in love with democracy? I understand that Rubio's family has a long and difficult history with Cuba, but can he really argue with a straight face that a half-century of embargo was working? Is he going to stake his claim on 50 more years of staying the course?