Huggy Bear to Cuban-American group: I won't meet with you

Spiteful little prick Huggy Bear, in the aftermath of his "joke" about killing Iranians with cigarettes, is finding new and better ways to win friends and influence people. This time, it's the Cuban-American community in Miami.

An advisor to Republican John McCain said that the candidate would not meet with a politically moderate Cuban-American organization because it "embraced" Democrat Barack Obama and his call for overhauling the Bush administration's Cuba policy.

The Cuban American National Foundation [(CANF)] tried to set up a meeting with McCain last month in New Orleans on the same day he was attending a private fundraiser organized by one of the group's directors. The foundation is officially nonpartisan, but many individual members are politically active.

Lobbyist Ana Navarro, a McCain advisor who frequently travels with the campaign, did an interview with WAQI-710 Radio Mambí from New Orleans on June 4, the day after the fundraiser.

"I understand [the foundation] had intended to come to a fundraiser in New Orleans, that they offered a large sum of money in exchange for a private meeting with McCain. They were told no," she said. "I don't like talking about the foundation, because I consider them fairly irrelevant."

She added: "It is obvious they have chosen, they have embraced, they have given a welcome and a forum to Barack Obama -- a man who wants to sit down with Raúl Castro without preconditions. . . . So I don't understand the insistence of the gentlemen in the Cuban American National Foundation in wanting to get together with John McCain when John McCain doesn't want to get together with them."

The McCain campaign did not respond to repeated requests Tuesday for comment.

McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were all invited to the foundation's Cuban Independence Day luncheon in Miami in May. Only Obama appeared, and gave a speech to the group.

This is classic GOP strategery. If you don't agree with the warmongering right-wing rhetoric, you're "irrelevant." If they're our enemies, we won't sit down with them and use diplomacy -- or, in this case, political dexterity -- to negotiate with them. It's asinine, it's childish, and it's the Republican Way.

And, unsurprisingly, Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber, two of the Three Hyphenated Stooges who represent Miami in Congress, are in the thick of the controversy.

CANF president Pepe Hernandez, who planned to go to New Orleans with chairman Jorge Mas Santos, blamed U.S. Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami for the meeting's collapse.

The two brothers are leading supporters of McCain in Florida and are vehement supporters of the current restrictions on travel and remittances, and Hernandez and Mas Santos are supporting their Democratic challengers. "They are letting their own personal interests undermine the interests of the McCain campaign and the Cuban-American community," Hernandez said.

A spokesman for the Diaz-Balarts denied that they were involved in blocking the meeting, but added that "it makes no sense to give "special treatment to a group that does not represent the Cuban-American community." [sic]

I'm more convinced than ever that the primary qualification to be a Republican politician these days is to be a massive asshole.