Republican cattle call at the Latin Builders

By Mark Silva and updated.

MIAMI – Welcome to a genuine, pre-primary cattle call at the Latin Builders Association, a daylong assembly of some of Miami’s best-wired movers and shakers in a ballroom of a towering downtown hotel where the leading Republican candidates for president are parading one by one.

Mitt Romney addressed the business-suited crowd this morning, talking about his wisdom as a businessman and how he is ready to take on Washington and turn it around. The Swamp missed his appearance, but is told he received good reviews here. Rudy Giuliani is addressing the crowd at lunch now. Mike Huckabee is expected at 2 pm EST, John McCain at 5.

It has turned cloudy here in Miami, and the storm clouds of a critical election are amassing on the horizon. On Tuesday, at least one of the four leading Republicans is likely to suffer a campaign-altering defeat in the Sunshine State’s presidential primary election. And one will soar with the results, priming him for the run of primaries that follows on Feb. 5.

They are calling this session “Decision 2008.’’

The builders in this room are “making the American dream come true… by building homes, businesses and communities,’’ Giuliani tells the builders – with a word about the peril that the slumping housing market poses to the economy at large. “I’m here because I know how to fix this problem,’’ he tells them. “I’ve seen it before. I’ve fixed it before. And with your help, we will go to Washington, and we will fix it together.

“We revitalized the economy of the city of New York,’’ he tells them, with a story of how he rejected calls for new taxes when he arrived in office to find an economy “in crisis.’’ Giuliani says “short-term solutions’’ such as the ones which Congress and the White House are proposing now are not going to “solve the problem.’’ He recommends the tax cuts he is proposing – making President Bush’s tax-cuts permanent, plus other moves such as reductions in corporate and capital gains taxes.

“We will give the death tax the death penalty,’’ he says.

“The men and women in this room are the source of our country’s greatest strength,’’ Giuliani tells the builders. "When I say I'm going to lower taxes, I'm voting for you rather than the government,'' he says to applause in the chandeliered ballroom.

It’s time for questions: How about immigration?

“We have to close the back door of illegal immigration, so we can open the front door of legal immigration,’’ says Giuliani, arguing that any person who arrives should “identify himself… go get printed, go get photographed and go get a tamper-proof identification card…

“Once you have the card, you can come into the United States, you can work here. You work, you pay taxes. You’ll be part of an over-ground society, not an underground society,’’ he says. “I believe I could do it in three or four years.

“What about the 12 million people that are here illegally, what do you do about them?’’ he asks. The ones who have committed crimes “should be deported… For the others, they should be able to come forward…. Register, get finger-printed and get a card, work and continue to pay taxes… Those who don’t come forward, who hide, should be thrown out of the country.

“If you had a system operating like that, it would work,’’ he says.

Marco Rubio of Miami, the first Hispanic speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, introduces Huckabee to the builders. “There is only one who understands what it is like to grow up the way we did,’’ Rubio tells this immigrant community. “His father worked two jobs… to make ends meet and open jobs of opportunity. Does that sound familiar?’’

Huckabee opened with effusive praise for Rubio: “In case you wondered, yes, that is pandering,’’ he tells the crowd, which laughs.

Huckabee says he had come to talk about an overlooked issue -- “The absolutely crumbling infrastructure of America.’’ He suggests a good jobs-building program: Six-laning Interstate 95 from Miami to Banghor, Maine. Two many people cannot get to work when they need to, he said to nods in the audience of a hotel about a mile from the ever-clogging I-95.

“Many of you in this room are people are here because the generation before you was willing to make major sacrifices and take pretty big risks,’’ he says. His parents hadn’t fled Communism, he says, but his father was a fireman and a mechanic. “His was a life of heavy lifting and hard work.

“The only soap that we had in my house when I was a kid was Lava soap,’’ he says. “I was in college before I found out that it isn’t supposed to hurt when you take a shower.’’