Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain with Anderson Cooper

“ Governor Romney, I've got to let you in on this. Is Senator McCain a better leader in terms of the economy?
ROMNEY: No. He's a fine man and a man I respect, and I particularly respect his service in the military and his integrity and courage for our nation. I do believe that as people over the centuries have considered who ought to lead our country, they don't look to senators. They look to governors. And they look to governors because they have the experience of being executive leaders. ”

“ ROMNEY: But let's talk about our policies with regards to greenhouse gases and global warming.
I think we all agree that America should become energy independent. The consequences of us continuing to buy over $1 billion of oil a day from people who oftentimes use this money against us is bad for our economy; it's bad for our foreign policy; and all that energy being used is probably bad for our environment. ”

“ Those are the reasons that I think when a governor gets to the White House, he does understand that leadership is about looking at all of those issues and realizing that there is no such thing as an isolated issue. Education, health care, economic development – they're all tied together, Anderson. And this is something that I don't hear coming often from people, who, with all due respect, in the legislative branch, have the luxury of picking out particular issues that they can specialize in.
Governors don't get to specialize. ”

“ What made Ronald Reagan a great president was not just the intricacies of his policies, though they were good policies. It was that he loved America and saw it as a good nation and a great nation because of the greatness of its people. ”

“ When we talk about spending, however, I hope people in the country understand that most people in Washington, most politicians, generally want to talk about the $2 and $3 and $4 relative items. And they want to talk about the big one.
Right now, federal spending is about 60 percent for entitlements – Social security, Medicare and Medicaid. And that's growing like crazy. It will be 70 percent entitlements, plus interest, by the time of the next president's second term.
And then the military is about 20 percent today. No one is talking about cutting the military, we ought to grow it. ”

“ And I'm the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go and the Petraeus strategy is the one that can succeed. That's because I have the experience, the knowledge, and the judgment.
And I believe that Americans will come home with honor. And the fact is – and the fact is that it's not American presence, because America, as the world's superpower, is going to have to be a lot of places in the world. It's how they come home.
And as president, I will follow in this tradition of sticking to my principles no matter what and bring our troops home with honor. ”

“ And we need to be looking at what people are doing, not just what they're saying, and recognizing that our foreign policy needs to reflect an extraordinary strength.
We need to make sure that the rest of the world knows that we're going to have a military that they're not wanting to engage for any purpose. And I do believe that President Reagan was right, you have peace through strength, not vulnerability. We've got to an Army that is well-staffed, well-trained, well- financed, and that is prepared for anything. ”

“ But when you put in place a new cap or a mandate, and particularly if you don't have any safety valve as to how much the cost of that cap might be, you would impose on the American people, if you do it unilaterally, without involving all the world, you'd impose on the American people a huge new effective tax: 20 percent on utilities, 50 cents a gallon for gasoline – that's according to the energy information agency – would be imposed on us.
And here's what happens. I've lived in the business world. I've lived in the real economy for 25 years of my life. ”

“ We should be debating foreign policy, whether we should have interventionism or non-interventionism, whether we should be defending this country or whether we should be the policemen of the world, whether we should be running our empire or not, and how are going to have guns and butter? ”

“ PAUL: Okay. The Constitution is very clear that the president is commander in chief of the military, but the president is not the commander in chief of the economy or of the people. And when we get reflection of conventional wisdom, but of a lot of lack of understanding of how the economy works. The president is not supposed to manage and run the economy. The people are supposed to do this. The government is supposed to give them sound money, low taxes, less regulation. The people are supposed to run it. But here, we're assuming that the president is supposed to run the economy. ”

“ If you talk to people who are driving trucks across America today, their fuel prices are significantly higher than they were a year ago. They're hurting because they're not making a lot more money to haul something, but they're spending a lot more money to get it done.
And all over our economy, with unemployment up to five percent across the nation, that means there are a lot of families today that don't have a paycheck and if you don't have a paycheck, then it's hard to put groceries on the table and it's hard to pay the rent. ”

“ And finally, could I just mention on the issue of rebates, fine, because part of this is psychological. Part of the problem we have, of course, in any recession is psychological. And I'm still optimistic that nothing is inevitable.
I still rely on the innovation and the talent of the United States of America. But we've got to make the tax cuts permanent. We need to get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax.
We need to give people a depreciation in one year for their business and investment. We need to encourage research and development and tax credits that are associated with it. ”

“ What we have today in the world is four major, if you will, strategies at play. One, they're the nations with the energy, like Russia. They're trying to use energy as a way to take over the world.
Then there's China, which is saying we're going to use communism, plus sort of a Wild West form of a free enterprise. We're going to give nuclear weapons – or nuclear technology to the Iranians, we're going to buy oil from the Sudanese. You've got China. Then you've got al Qaeda, which says we want to bring everybody down. ”

“ MCCAIN: Actually, I think lower and middle income Americans need more help. Obviously, I think that's the case today. That's one reason why we're giving them rebates.
I was part of the Reagan revolution. I was there with Jack Kemp and Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman and all these other fighters that wanted to change a terrible economic situation in America with 10 percent unemployment and 20 percent interest rates. I was proud to be a foot soldier, support those tax cuts, and they had spending restraints associated with it. ”

“ If we value each other as human beings and believe that everybody has equal worth, and that that intrinsic value is not affected by net worth, or ancestry, or last name, or job description, or ability, or disability, then the issue of the sanctity of human life is far bigger than just being anti-abortion. ”

“ Nevertheless, this president did pull us out of a deep recession. He put in place two tax cuts which did get the country out of a recession and helped rebuild the country. Now we see ourselves headed apparently towards one again. We hope not.
ROMNEY: Whether there's a recession technically or not, one thing we know – middle-income families are feeling squeezed and people are losing homes and people are having a hard time paying for their gasoline and they're having a hard time paying for heating oil in places that that's a big part of their life. ”

“ They're leading an organization. Senators and congressmen are fine people, but they're legislators. They sit in committees. They're committee chairs. And they call that leadership. In my view, the key leadership of my life was 25 years in the private sector, helping build business, turn a business around, start a business successfully, then going off to the Olympics, helping turn the Olympics around.
You don't do that as a manager; you do that as a leader. We shouldn't demean the people who are starting up small businesses, or middle-sized businesses, or people who run volunteer organizations. ”

“ That's the most important thing to understand about the inflation of the monetary system, is the malinvestment. Then, later on, people suffer. You wipe out the middle class. But the evil of it all is the vehicle for financing wars that we shouldn't be in and a welfare state that we shouldn't be doing.
So, yes, we have a role to play, but it's a negative role. We want the people to be free. ”

“ I mean, in 1952, we Republicans were elected to stop the war in Korea. In 1968, we were elected to stop the war in Vietnam. And, tragically, we didn't stop it very fast: 30,000 more men died.
So when I talk about these long-term stays, I think, "How many men are you willing to let die for this, for something that has nothing to do with our national security?"
There were no al Qaeda there. It had nothing do with 9/11. And there was no threat to our national security. They never committed aggression. It's unconstitutional. It's an undeclared war. ”

“ So tonight, in terms of the economy, are Americans better off than they were eight years ago?
MITT ROMNEY: Well, if you're voting for George Bush, you'd be very interested in knowing the answer to that. If you're voting for Mitt Romney, you'd like to know, "Are you better off in Massachusetts after four years of my term in office?" And the answer would be decidedly yes.
I came into a state which was very much in a deep ditch. It was losing money every month. We had a $3 billion budget gap. We had people losing jobs every single month. During my predecessor's term, we'd lost 160,000 jobs. ”

“ But I look at people's actions, because you can look into their eyes and their eyes can lie, but their actions don't.
And when people take actions that cause us to give concern to human rights violations, to oppression – and I don't care what their eyes are saying – their actions are speaking a whole lot louder than their eyes ever will. ”

“ Let's talk about another issue which a lot of Americans watching tonight, immigration. And Jim VandeHei has a question.
VANDEHEI: Obviously, we're here in California, where one-third of the population is Hispanic, Latino. Immigration has been a huge issue in this campaign from the beginning.
Governor Huckabee, Brian Berry of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, wants to know: "In order to curb illegal immigration, do you support making changes in the law that would give citizenship only to children who are born to parents who are legally in this country at the time the child is born?" ”

“ And then finally there's us, the only major power in the world that says we believe in free enterprise and freedom for the individual. And this great battle is going on right now, and it's essential for us to strengthen other friends like ourselves, and to confront one by one these other strategies and help turn them towards modernity so that the world our kids inherent does not have to know war. ”

“ Let's turn for a minute to the troubled economy we're trying to deal with. Governor Huckabee, President Bush and some of your opponents on the stage here believe that giving income tax rebates is the best way to stimulate the economy. ”

“ Where do you cut spending if you want to spend some money? We need lower taxes, less regulations, and we need to free up the market.
We can't expect the government to do everything. We have to faith and confidence that the market works, but you can't do any of that unless you look at the monetary system.
COOPER: Next question to Senator McCain from Jim Vandehei.
VANDEHEI: We're staying on the economy here. As you well know, foreclosures last year were up 75 percent. A lot of people are losing homes. A lot of people who have adjustable rate mortgages are about to have them adjust up. ”

“ Americans are uncertain about this housing crisis. Americans are uncertain about the economy, as we see the stock market bounce up and down, but more importantly, the economy particularly in some parts of the country, state of Michigan, Governor Romney and I campaigned, not to my success, I might add, and other parts of the country are probably better off. ”

“ By the way, President Eisenhower didn't bail us out of Korea.
But the point is that we need to protect America's national security interest. It's not a matter of presence. It's a matter of casualties.
We are succeeding. We are succeeding. And I unequivocally put my career and my political fortunes on the line and unequivocally said we're going to support this surge. We're not going to talk about timetables or anything else; we're going to talk about winning and what's necessary to win. ”

“ When a town on Norway is somehow affected by the housing situation in the United States of America, we've gotten ourselves into a very interesting dilemma.
If necessary, we're going to have to take additional actions and particularly in cleaning up a mortgage. A mortgage should be one page and there should be big letters at the bottom that says, "I understand this document."
We ought to adjust the mortgages so people who were eligible for better terms, but were somehow convinced to accept the mortgages which were more onerous on them. ”