Marco Rubio's parents fled Cuba, not because Fidel Castro and communism were too oppressive but because Fulgencio Batista's militaristic crony capitalism failed to provide economic opportunity.
[A] review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2 1/2 years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.Yet Rubio is an advocate for the Republican Party's militaristic crony capitalism.
I suspect that Rubio's teabagger views illustrate the power of the social norm he grew up in - a community filled with ideological Cubano exiles. He learned to hate the things they hated and to love the things they loved.
And he filled in his biography with an origin myth to justify those emotions. Factual or not, those emotions are what mattered, not reality.
