McCain Speaks in South Florida
PALM BEACH, Fla. _ In his first official campaign stop in Palm Beach County, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain told a group of Florida broadcasters Wednesday that while he backed continued economic pressure on the communist regime in Cuba, he would not sanction any military actions against the Castro regime were he to win the 2008 election.
“I don’t think we can move militarily against a country just because they have a government we don’t like,” said McCain in responding to a question from an audience of about 150 members of the Florida Association of Broadcasters. “If we did that, the backlash around the world would be serious.”
Asked about trading with Cuba to hasten a democratic transition, McCain said, “I don’t know what we’d trade besides 1950s vintage cars.”
As for the war in Iraq, McCain repeated his oft-sounded criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the invasion aftermath while supporting the latest U.S. plan that has pushed up troop levels in an effort to secure Baghdad and other cities. “I think we have a strategy that can work,” said McCain, a former Navy pilot who was shot down during the Vietnam War in 1967.
But he added, referring to public opposition to the war and a mounting American death toll that has now exceeded 3,500, “Whether we have enough time to prove to the American people that advances are taking place is very questionable.”
Eight years after he lost his first bid for the GOP nomination to George W. Bush, the Arizona senator is trailing party front-runners Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani in both election polls and fundraising. But his appearance here at the Four Seasons, and at another scheduled stop Wednesday evening in Orlando at the Orange County Republican Executive Committee’s Lincoln Day Dinner, were designed to bolster those totals.
In prepared remarks, McCain outlined a plan of engagement with Latin America to encourage democracy and free markets. He castigated the rule of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, warned against radical Islamic groups in Trinidad and stressed the importance of restoring U.S.-Mexico relations to “the bright days at the beginning of the Bush administration.”
Linking geopolitics, petroleum-producing Venezuela and the need for increased energy efficiency, McCain said, “Too many dictatorships are enriched by our reliance on foreign oil.”
As the political season grinds on, McCain said he would return to Florida often. “It’s a diverse state, a big state, there’s money here. It’s an important state,” he said. “So I come back here a lot anyway.”
Florida Broadcasters chairman John Hunt, the West Palm Beach, Fla.-based vice president of Clear Channel radio, said the three top presidential candidates in both the Republican and Democratic parties were invited to address the group during its two-day meeting, but only McCain accepted. “I think he got a terrific reception,” said Hunt. “He handled himself well.”
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