Fidel Castro took just enough time to return jabs at Republican presidential candidates today, calling the GOP leadership race “the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” Huffington Post reported.

In a newspaper column published today by state media, the revolutionary Cuban leader suggested the hardline Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney took against his island nation shows there is little hope for Republicans.

"The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been," Castro wrote, according to HuffPo.

How they would handle Cuba should they be elected president was seen as an important question in Monday's Florida debate considering the state’s large Cuban population. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, suggested President Obama selected the wrong time to try to relax travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans to visit family.

“We want to stand with the people of Cuba that want freedom,” Romney said Monday, Reuters reported. “We want to move that effort forward not by giving in and saying we lost, but by saying we will fight for democracy.”

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Gingrich, a former House speaker, would take a more aggressive approach with covert operations to trigger a “Cuban Spring.”

The debate’s sparring took a personal tone when Romney said he would thank “heavens that Fidel Castro has returned to his maker and will be sent to another land” upon the 85-year-old former leader’s death.

That’s not where Gingrich said Castro’s soul would rest for eternity, “He’s going to the other place.”

Castro didn’t respond directly to his detractors in the column, instead saying he was through analyzing the Republican candidates.

He did weigh in regarding the death of Wilman Villar, however. The 31-year-old Cuban prisoner died Jan. 19, with Amnesty International calling him a prisoner of conscience. Castro said Villar was in jail for domestic violence and received the best medical care possible. He was not, the leader said, on a 50-day hunger strike, Huffington Post said.

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