California Republican debate transcript

Moderator: Senator Brownback, do you find any faults in Mayor Giuliani?

(Laughter)

I saw you looking attentively, waiting for him to say something.

Brownback: No, I don't. And I think the crowd will see and I think the audience will see as well that's watching this, these are a set of quality candidates. And that's why I love about this, is we've got a chance to debate ideas.

And we win as a party when we run on ideas, big ideas and principles. And you're seeing these articulated here, and that's why we're going to win in 2008. It's going to be on principles and ideas and big ideas, how we lead.

Moderator: Thank you.

Governor Huckabee, this question comes from a reader in New York: "In light of the scandals plaguing the current administration and its allies, involving corruption and cronyism, which mistakes have you learned not to repeat?"

Huckabee: The most important thing a president needs to do is to make it clear that we're not going to continue to see jobs shipped overseas, jobs that are lost by American workers, many in their 50s who, for 20 and 30 years, have worked to make a company rich, and then watch as a CEO takes a $100 million bonus to jettison those American jobs somewhere else. And the worker not only loses his job, but he loses his pension.

That's criminal. It's wrong. And if Republicans don't stop it, we don't deserve to win in 2008.

Moderator: Congressman Tancredo, this reader requests a yes or no answer: "Will you work to protect women's rights, as in fair wages and reproductive choice?"

Tancredo: I will work to protect women's rights.

The reproductive choice part of that, if I heard you correctly, is a reference to abortion. The right to kill another person is not a right that I would agree with and support.

Moderator: Governor Thompson, Joanie from California wants to know how many American soldiers have lost their lives in the Iraq war, and how many have been injured, to date?

Thompson: There's been over 3,000 that have been lost and several thousand that have been injured. And the truth of the matter is, is that we have to do everything we possibly can to give our troops the necessary dollars, the resources, the weaponry and the armed forces, in order to be able to protect themselves.

It's a bond that every American has with our armed forces. Any time an American soldier's in harm's way, we have to do everything, as our country, to protect them.

Moderator: We're at the last round. It's going to be 30-second responses. I want to start with Mayor Giuliani.

Something you've come out for, I believe -- I want you to explain it and defend it: a national tamper-proof ID card.

Giuliani: I think that's critical to having immigration security. Every single person in this country who comes in from a foreign country should be identified, should be in a database. It should be a tamper-proof card.

Giuliani: I probably have the most experience in dealing with security. I had to take a city that had an outlandish amount of crime and reduce it.

So the very, very best way to sensibly create security is to have a tamper-proof card, a database, and then kind of back up from that -- well, how do we get there? That would allow for a fence, a technological fence, border patrol, having people come forward. People who are paying taxes or who want to pay taxes...

Moderator: That's the time.

Giuliani: ... God bless them. Let them pay taxes.

Moderator: Governor Romney, I think -- are you with him on that, a tamper-proof ID card?

Romney: Absolutely. I had the occasion, as you know, following the great disaster on 9/11, to help organize the Olympic Winter Games, bring people from all over the world together in Salt Lake City, organize the first national special security event following that tragedy, and brought together law enforcement from all over the country, coordinated them in a way that we could communicate with each other.

There's no question as we deal with the issue of immigration, having a national special card that indicates a person's name, date, birth date, biographic information, and an indication of their work status will allow us to know who's here legally, who's not, who can work and who cannot.

Moderator: Is someone against this on libertarian grounds, the idea of a national ID card?

Senator Brownback?

Brownback: I don't think this is the way to go, and I don't think we need to go this way. And I've been serving on the Judiciary Committee and working on these immigration issues.

What we need to do is secure the border with a fence, and then interior-wise, we need to make sure that that Social Security number means something. We already have a Social Security number.

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