With Friends Like These

House Democrats believe they have a decent shot at endangering the seats of a troika of South Florida Cuban American Republicans, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, his brother Mario, and the evil Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. But one problem. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, a Florida Democrat who co-chairs the "red to blue" program aimed at picking up seats won't get involved because she's pals with the Republicans in question. Which is nice for her, but obviously the role of someone in her position is to try to beat Republican incumbents, not protect them.

To be fair, though, it's not just personal ties that bring all these hyphenated Floridians together, it's also a passion for continuing decades-old foreign policy failures:

Wasserman Schultz has also played a leading role in persuading the new Democratic majority to sustain the economic embargo against Cuba and has established close ties to the staunchly pro-embargo U.S.-Cuba Democracy political action committee, which has contributed thousands to Wasserman Schultz and Meek's campaigns.

After all, the first fifty years of the embargo have done wonders for Cuban democracy, so just give it another 150 or so, democracy will break out, and then tourists can visit Havana in flying cars. I don't see anything wrong with that.