Exclusive: Ros-Lehtinen to retire from Congress

[hrmjustin]

Source: Miami Herald

Patricia Mazzei


U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the dean of the Florida legislative delegation and the first Cuban American elected to Congress, is retiring at the end of her term next year, saying it’s time to move on after 38 years in elected office.

“It's been such a delight and a high honor to serve our community for so many years and help constituents every day of the week,” the Miami Republican told the Miami Herald in an exclusive telephone interview Sunday. “We just said, ‘It's time to take a new step.’”

Her unexpected retirement marks the end of a storied career in which Ros-Lehtinen repeatedly broke political ground as a Cuban-American woman -- and gives Democrats an opportunity to pick up a South Florida congressional seat in 2018.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article147718764.html

[calimary]

1. Oh Blessed be to God!!!

That's the best news I've heard yet, today!

That woman has been an irritant to our side and almost everything we believe in, from Day One.

[PatSeg]

6. She is not as bad as some republicans,

but I've always found her to be irritating and annoying. Looking forward to many "retirements" over the next year or so.

[George II]

2. Although she's a republican and fairly conservative, there have been many times over the years....

...when she's made decisions for the good of the country rather than for her party.

Still and all, I hope we get a good candidate to win back that seat.

[SCVDem]

3. Writing, meet wall.

Better to leave than be held accountable for the dump votes!

[RandySF]

4. Good pickup opportunity.

[NewJeffCT]

5. she won by under 10 points last time out

with her long tenure, this could be a good pickup opportunity for Democrats

https://ballotpedia.org/Florida%27s_27th_Congressional_District_election,_2016

[kskiska]

7. I'll never forget her over-the-top performance

during the Elian Gonzales debacle. She kept saying that Elian wouldn't have any milk, and would end up working in the sugar cane fields if he were sent back to his father in Cuba.

[HAB911]

8. I don't like any Miami Cubans

Living in Tampa where the Cuban community is 100 years old and not as conservative and right wing.

[WellDarn]

9. Not that it matters

Because the wealthy Repiblican-voting Cubans who drained Cuba of capital after the revolution with the hope they could someday return to their positions of privilege have had their numbers reduced through the same fate that met their nemesis and have been replaced by their Democratic-voting victims so we will takes this seat BUT what in God's name has Ross-Lehtinen ever done that made her "not as bad" as other Republicans?

[Judi Lynn]

14. Also, bloody dictator Fulgencio Batista & his henchmen helped themselves to the nation's Treasury

before hitting the road as soon as they realized they had lost the country after years of torturing dissidents, murdering them, and terrorizing the population with scenes like the bodies of suspected leftists hanging in pieces from trees, as they did in Santiago de Cuba, or from lamp poles, or merely thrown out of cars upon the city streets as they roared off.

Some times they forced them to dig their own graves, then buried them in them, sometimes they stuck them in "gunny" sacks, poured gasoline over them and set them on fire. These tableaus they arranged for the population to witness went a long way to keep a lot of the poorest Cubans, which constituted the majority, living in deep fear.

The wealthiest Cubans prospered with Batista moving either as President, or behind the scenes, as he did for 35 years. They created a vicious, sadistic, racist culture, riding herd over a multitude of desperately poor descendants of slaves who only could find seasonal work in the fields, raising products for export to other countries, like tobacco, sugar, and fruit, etc. while going hungry themselves.

Ileana's "exile" culture in Miami, which claimed they found Miami to be a "sleepy fishing village" and "turned it into a world-class city", always assumed the US would invade Cuba again, and return them to their overlord positions, and get rid of all the rebels.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was nicknamed "La Loba" in Cuba by the people there long ago. (Loba meaning she-wolf.) She was horrendously active in fighting ALL opportunities which arose for the US to find earlier dialogue with Cuba before Jimmy Carter and Pres. Obama finally were able to break through. (You recall Jimmy Carter went to Cuba and made a nationwide speech from an outdoor public place which was carried live on TV and radio, and printed in its entirety in Cuban newspapers.

The "exiles" also despised Bill Clinton for legally returning Elian Gonzalez to his own father after that monstrous ordeal in Miami, during which armed Cubans took up residence around Lazaro Gonzalez' house and let it publicly be known they were prepared to shoot it out if the government came to take Elian to his father.

[center]

Ileana, holding Elian.



Ileana, sitting with Orlando Bosch, co-author
of the mass mid-air bombing of a Cubana air
liner, carrying its young team of fencers home
from a tournament, some of them teenagers.

Ileana championed Orlando Bosch, along with
Jeb Bush, to get him re-admitted to the country
when the US Asst. Attorney General Joe D.
Whitley refused to allow him to re-enter the US.
due to his life as a terrorist.

EXCLUSION PROCEEDING
for
ORLANDO BOSCH AVILA

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_051-075/doc0054.html



Ileana was one of the first radical right-wingers who raced to Honduras
to embrace the new coup President, James Micheletti, the moment they
violently entered the home of President Mel Zelaya, kidnapped him, in
his pajamas, flew him to Nicaragua and dumped him out on the runway,
and took over the country, started a ferocious period of terrorism,
selective assassination, tortures, systemic abuse of civil leaders, doctors,
teachers, environmental workers, indigenous and African descended]
people, and their supporters. Grotsque, and brutul, and very corrupt
government has become firmly entrenched in Honduras now.

Hondurans' nickname for Micheletti, due to his heavy-handed rule was
"Goriletti."

[/center]

Thanks for your reality-based comments! Welcome to D.U., WellDarn.

[WellDarn]

15. Thank you for this

The "romanticization" of the wealthy who abandoned Cuba, regardless of whether it is being done in the name of political gain (as in the case of some and perhaps many in our own party) or in the name of a bloody brotherhood (as in the case of Republicans), is among the biggest lies of 20th Century Western Hemisphere history.

[not fooled]

10. Well, she outlasted Fidel

so she prolly thinks her life's goal has been attained.

[Rustyeye77]

11. She's more reasonable that most of the RWers.

Too bad most of them aren't like her.

[jmowreader]

12. Rodrigo Duterte is more reasonable than most of our RWers

[tenorly]

13. And do what? Serve as Tony Montana's Washington lobbyist?

[center]

Say hello to my liddle fren'.[/center]

[rpannier]

16. Good riddance

[IronLionZion]

17. Any chance a Dem can pick up her seat?

Hillary won her district by 20 points so it should be possible if we run a good candidate and our people are energized to vote.

[WoonTars]

18. DWS's bestest buddy?

...wow, when rats likes that start to jump ship, maybe Nancy Pelosi is right and we really DO stand a chance in 2018..