How dumb is Mario Diaz-Balart?

Here's the transcript of what he said to Naples Daily News Opinion Editor Jeff Lytle on the show "One on One':

Lytle: "If some of the people with Cuban heritage with whom I've spoken were right here right now, they would say to you, 'What you're telling us is the old way of thinking. We've heard that many, many times before. It's time to get past that and to move on to a new day.''

Diaz-Balart: "True. That's what people used to say when they wanted to do business with the apartheid regime in South Africa. It's time to just do business with the apartheid regime in South America, and by the way it's going to help the unfortunate blacks. It was the same attitude of those who wanted to do business and did business with Hitler and supported that fascist, murderous regime, and actually supported it even until the truth came out in many, many case. Because, what the heck, let's just do business with them because there's a buck to be made. It's the same attitude that some of our strong allies like the French and others have with other state sponsors of terrorism like Iran."

The transcript per Naked Politics.

Wasn't the United States one of the supporters of the Apartheid South African regime for a long time? I'm going to ignore that particular bombastic statement to try to process the rest.

Firstly, you can't completely shut dialogue off with a state, such as Cuba or Iran, that's the very problem. Second, it's not a "let's make a buck" thing. I'm sufficiently confident that our system in America is better than the Cuban one and that if American companies and products flood Cuba, the system will fall. It's called Cheeseburger Diplomacy ladies and gentlemen.

But the important thing isn't the policies in this situation. It's the vilification of people who disagree with him and likening them to Nazi supporters. Mario Diaz-Balart would love to stifle dissent Castro style regarding this policy. He doesn't want dialogue because frankly, if one analyzes the efficiency of this policy in 2009 after 50 years, it's been a failure. But also if this issue goes away, what would Mario run on? What platform? So he needs to help destruct discourse in the political arena to score cheap political points with his constituents. The Non-nazi types I'd assume.