So President Obama shook Cuban President Raúl Castro's hand
earlier today at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela ... and the Republican outrage machine kicked into full gear, from right-wing airwaves to the halls of Congress. Fox
called it "the moment" that everyone will talk about from the memorial service, and at least in the case of conservatives like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, that
appeared to be true.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) blasted President Obama on Tuesday after the president shook hands with Cuban leader Raul Castro at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.
“If the President was going to shake his hand, he should have asked him about those basic freedoms Mandela was associated with that are denied in Cuba,” Rubio said.
But Rubio's comments were no match for Sen. John McCain, who
not only accused President Obama of handing Castro a "propaganda" victory to "prop up his dictatorial regime," but also promptly violated Godwin's Law by offering this analogy:
Neville Chamberlain shook Hitler's hand.
Of course, as Meteor Blades
noted earlier, it's also true that Republicans have offered up some handshakes in the past that would surely have provoked their outrage machine had it been Obama and not one of their own. I mean, can you imagine if it had been Obama and not John McCain who shook Gadafi's hand? (Remember
this tweet bragging about that from McCain himself?) Heck, even Richard Nixon shook Fidel Castro's hand, though I guess Republicans these days are probably trying to accuse Nixon of being a Democrat.
Obviously, the whole handshake thing is a complete nothingburger from a substantive perspective. But now that HealthCare.gov is working better, and the GOP is having more and more trouble attacking Obama for being a bad website developer, this kind of stuff is all they've got. In other words, things are getting back to normal.