What Matters Now Is the Republican Reaction to the Nominations of Holder and Craig

"Today, in Little Havana, a day prior to Obama's visit to Miami, Elián's great-uncle, Delfín González, will hold a press conference to denounce the fact that two of the principal actors in the Elián affaire, Greg Craig and Eric Holder, are now key advisers to Barack Obama. The then Assistant Attorney General Eric Holder, who planned the logistics of Elián's kidnapping, is now in charge of the advisory committee that will vet Obama's running-mate and is likely to be named Attorney General in a future Obama administration. Castro's (and Clinton's) lawyer and longtime unregistered agent of influence of the Cuban regime, Greg Craig, who ostensibly represented Elián's father and provided a "safe haven" to father and son in his own house under the surveillance of Castro agents from the Cuban Interests Section, is now Obama's advisor on Latin America and probable choice for Under-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs." — "Elián's Never-Ending Saga," RCAB, June 20, 2008

It was never a secret that both Eric Holder and Greg Craig were destined to be political commissars in the Obama Revolution. As I predicted here Holder will be nominated for Attorney General, but Craig will not be Undersecretary of State for Latin American, not out of any consideration for the sensibilities of Cuban exiles, but because he is not-so-cordially hated by the future Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for having dumped her in favor of Obama before she could even make her case to him. Craig, Hillary's whilom friend of 30+ years and Bill's counsel during his impeachment hearings, is the keeper of all the Clinton's dirty laundry, and Hillary will never forgive him for hanging it all (as she suspects) in Obama's camp. If State is to be Hillary's domain, then there is no place there for this slimy turncoat. Instead, Craig has been named to the more powerful position of White House counsel, where he will advice the "constitutional lawyer" on constitutional law from the unique perspective of one who has broken or twisted every law in the book.

The Republicans in the Senate, who are acting like Obama's bendover buddies even before the official beginning of the honeymoon period (really Obama's political career has been one endless honeymoon), have already signalled that they will give Holder a pass for "Pardongate" at his confirmation hearings and none has raised any objection to Greg Craig. I am not concerned about Democrats acting like Democrats. What concerns me is Republicans acting like Democrats. If Holder's lawless behavior during the seizure of Elián González is not even a beep on the radar anymore and Craig's representation of Fidel Castro in the Elián affaire and in a host of other legal matters is deemed to fall within the scope of lawyer-client privilege, then it can only be because the Republicans do not want to squander their scant political capital on behalf of our community by raising those questions.

During the Bush presidency, Cuban-American demanded nothing of the man whom they made president and received hearty thanks and nothing else in return. Cuban exiles will never enlist in the Democratic party nor should they: exercising that kind of "leverage" is comparable to that which was exerted by the hangman in his public duties, except that we would be both victim and executioner. There is nowhere for us to go outside the Republican party. Therefore, our efforts should be concentrated in the next four years in demanding the respect which we have earned from the GOP as its most faithful constituents. If it is not forthcoming, then we should become passive spectators in its descent into bipartisanship. Till, finally, when all differences have been erased or muted between the major parties, we can expect (or at least hope) for the birth of a new political dispensation that will replace the incestuous melding of Democrats and Republicans. The end of civilization does not exclude the possibility of its re-birth, though the pall may not be easily dissipated, perhaps not even in our lifetime.