Mitt Romney will adopt a clear policy toward the Cuban regime: no accommodation, no appeasement. The United States should not relent until the day when the Castros’ regime meets its end and their history is written among the world's most reviled despots, tyrants, and frauds. The North Star that guides Mitt Romney’s policy toward the island is the realizable dream of a free Cuba.

Unfortunately, President Obama has adopted a strategy of appeasement toward the Castro regime. He unilaterally relaxed sanctions without making any demands of the regime. Predictably, the Castros responded to these naïve concessions by tightening their grip on the island and by taking an American, Alan Gross, as a political prisoner. Now, increased travel and remittances to Cuba prop up a regime desperate for foreign currency.

Mitt Romney will break sharply with President Obama’s appeasement strategy. Mitt Romney believes unilateral concessions to a dictatorial regime are counterproductive, helping to secure a succession of power and greater repression instead of a transition to freedom. Mitt Romney will send a strong message to both the regime and the Cuban people that the United States stands with the courageous pro-democracy movement on the island, and that our support will never waver. Mitt Romney’s policy toward Cuba will include:

•Reinstating Travel & Remittance Restrictions
•Adhering to the Helms-Burton Act.
•Demanding Release of Alan Gross
•Democracy Promotion Programs
•Breaking the Information Blockade
•Publicly Naming Oppressors.
•Holding the Castros Accountable for the Brothers to the Rescue Shoot Down
•Bolstering the Inter-American Democratic Charte
•Campaign for Economic Opportunity in Latin America
•Hemispheric Joint Task Force on Crime & Terrorism

January 25, 2012: mittromney.com

Mitt advocating the assassination of Fidel Castro

"This is a critical time. I think you realise that. We've waited a long, long time for the opportunity that is represented by a new president, and by new leadership, or by old leadership finally kicking the bucket in Cuba… And I want to take advantage… I want to be the American president that is proud to be able to say that I was president at the time that we brought freedom back to the people of Cuba.

If I'm fortunate to become the next president of the United States it is my expectation that Fidel Castro will finally be taken off this planet… I doubt he'll take any time in the sky. He'll find a nether region to be more to his comfort…

I know I learned something about negotiating. I found that if I was trying to negotiate with someone else that before I gave them something, I wanted to know what I was going to get back. The idea that I’m going to negotiate, it’s a trade – I’m going to get something, and they’re going to get something.

What has occurred to me as I’ve watched our president over the last Castro years, is that from time to time we have a president who thinks that a tyrant, that a person who considers America their enemy, that that tyrant will give them something, just by virtue of us giving them something, with no trade whatsoever. Where we just say here, we’ll give you this thing and hope you’ll give us something nice back. Negotiations are not a matter of giving and hope. They’re a matter of giving and getting in return.

This president has decided to give a gift, to Castro, to allow remittances to come from the United States to go into Cuba and help the economy of Cuba. He’s allowed more traveling into Cuba. Showing that olive branch if you will. And how has it been met? It is met with a man, Wilman Villar*, who must sacrifice his own life through his hunger strike, with many, many people being oppressed in prison.

This president does not understand that by helping Castro, he is not helping the people of Cuba he is hurting them, he is not putting forward a policy of freedom, he is accommodating and encouraging a policy of oppression, and if I’m President of the United States, we will return to Helms-Burton and the law, and we will not give Castro any gifts.