Meet the Diaz-Balarts: A couple of Castro's 'nephews' — in Congress

National Review, March 10, 2003 by Jay Nordlinger

Both Diaz-Balart congressmen started out as Democrats, but switched parties in the 1980s. Why? Lincoln speaks essentially for both brothers: "Well, it was Ronald Reagan. He made me a Republican, with his fight against communism, particularly in this hemisphere. The more I learn about him, the more I admire him. And Chris Dodd made me a Republican, too." Sen. Dodd was a Democrat who fought Reagan constantly on Latin America. "It's kind of ironic, but now I'm in Congress, battling Chris Dodd on some of these same issues. He doesn't know it, but he had a lot to do with my becoming a Republican." Lincoln cites another former Democrat, Jeane Kirkpatrick, as his "soulmate," a woman whose way of thinking and analyzing is exactly in line with his own.

The brothers are deeply admiring of the current president. Lincoln avers that he's practically as good as Reagan! They're also admirers of the president's brother, the governor of Florida. "Jeb Bush is beyond smart," Lincoln says. "He's one of the smartest people I've ever known. You can talk big picture with him, you can talk about budget details -- it doesn't matter. Jeb's on top of everything." Besides which, his Spanish is "excellent -- fluent." (The governor's wife is Mexican.)

As for George W., Lincoln says, "I like his instincts. When a problem reaches his desk, he decides it in the correct manner." Whether information reaches his desk, however, is another matter. Lincoln says that vital information about Cuba -- including Castro's role in international terrorism -- seems not to make its way up the chain. Nor is he happy with the administration's Latin America policy overall. "I don't think that Secretary Powell has been sufficiently in tune with what's going on" in the region, he says. The situation in Venezuela is deteriorating, with Hugo Chavez having discarded "his democratic legitimacy." Colombia "needs more help, more attention, more emphasis." Granted, there's a mammoth war on terrorism in progress, plus nuclear- armed North Korea. "But there's a strange inertia in our country that leads to the ignoring of our own hemisphere."

When all is said and done, what fires the Diaz-Balarts is freedom. They can get as exercised about China as they do about Cuba. "I feel almost embarrassed for the human race that we just sit here and accept regimes like that," says Lincoln. He decries the fact that the Cubans have so few supporters and defenders on the world scene -- Vaclav Havel is often a lonely voice.

And what about the post-Castro period -- Liberation Day and after? Will there be a Diaz-Balart migration in reverse? Lincoln allows that "I'm going to know things that are useful. I often think, 'Gosh, when there's finally a parliament again, there should be a rules committee.' I have a duty to be generous with what I know." But leadership should be taken by the dissidents, he says -- as in the former Czechoslovakia, as in Poland. Take the imprisoned and unfathomably heroic Oscar Elias Biscet: "I know what it means for someone like Dr. Biscet, who could be in exile, who could have become a physician in Miami, to have voluntarily chosen to take a stand that would lead him to a dungeon. So, if there's any justice in the world, the dissidents, the oppositionists, the democrats -- the ones who have suffered and bled and risked everything -- will be the ones in the lead."