• Submitted by: lena campos
• Politics and Government
• 09 / 22 / 2012

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Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., appears at the AARP convention in New Orleans Friday before heading to Florida for campaign stop Saturday.

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan courted Cuban-American voters Saturday with promises that a Romney administration would support pro-democracy groups in Cuba and “clamp down” on the island’s communist, Castro-led government, a tougher policy than President Barack Obama has followed.

Florida is the biggest up-for-grabs state in the November election, and Ryan’s promises come just days after two polls of likely Florida voters, one by Fox News and one by NBC, showed Obama leading 49 percent to 44 percent. Such promises play well among Miami’s older, Cuban-American voters who can have an impact in competitive races.

Obama has eased restrictions to allow Americans to travel to Cuba and Cuban-Americans to send money to family on the island. But the president has stopped well short of discussing lifting the 50-year-old economic embargo, which is widely viewed in Latin America as a failure and has complicated U.S. relationships in the region. Obama’s call for democratic change in Cuba during April’s Summit of the Americas in Colombia drew criticism from the Castro government.

While campaigning Saturday morning in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, the Wisconsin congressman credited Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart and former Rep. Lincoln Diaz Balart –– all Miami-area Republicans who support the embargo and strengthened sanctions against Cuba –– with teaching him “just how brutal the Castro regime is. Just how this president’s policy of appeasement is not working.”

Source: News-journalonline.com