In a public break with the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the US should lift the half-century-old embargo of Cuba.
“The embargo is Castro’s best friend,” Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations while promoting her new book, “Hard Choices.”
Clinton, who is considered the leading Democratic hopeful for president in 2016, said the Castro regime has used the embargo as a ready “excuse” to blame the US for all its problems and foment anti-American sentiment.
“I would like to see the excuse removed,” Clinton said.
“It also would help our relationship with other Latin American countries . . . I’d like to change the psychology of that issue.”
The Obama administration says before the embargo is lifted, Cuba must first improve human rights and release imprisoned US contractor Alan Gross, who was sentenced to 15 years for attempting to establish an illegal communications network on the island.
But Clinton said it’s important for the US to bolster its image and standing “in our hemisphere.”
In her book, Clinton said she had urged Obama privately to end the embargo when she was secretary of state.
Realistically, Clinton said Thursday that the embargo has a better chance to be lifted after the Castro regime is out of power. She said Fidel Castro and his brother Raul have taken actions to undermine prior overtures to improve US-Cuba relations.
Lifting the embargo is an emotional and politically explosive issue in the battleground state of Florida, which is populated by many anti-Castro Cubans who support the embargo. But more Cuban-Americans are questioning what the embargo has accomplished.
Cuban-Americans traditionally lean Republican, and it’s likely that GOP candidates running for president in 2016 will toe the pro-embargo line.
But Florida is now populated by more non-Cuban Hispanics who lean Democratic.
Meanwhile, Clinton got into a testy debate about when and how she changed her position to support gay marriage. Like Obama, she opposed it when she ran for president in 2008.
“You are playing with my words,” Clinton told NPR’s Terry Gross. “And playing with what is such an important issue.”
“I think you are trying to say that I used to be opposed [to gay marriage], and now I am in favor, and I did it for political reasons. And that’s just flat wrong,” Clinton said.
“So let me just state what I feel like you are implying and repudiate it. I have a strong record. I have a great commitment to this issue and I am proud of what I’ve done and the progress we’re making,” she said.
Clinton admitted that, like many Americans, she has “evolved” on the issue.
“I did not grow up imagining gay marriage,” she said.