Iowa GOP Debate: "Waiting for Godot" Version
Dennis Ryerson: Get started with opening statements.
George W. Bush: Talk about tax cuts today.
Orrin Hatch: I really want to see the Clinton-Gore team go.
Gary Bauer: The sanctity of human life.
Steve Forbes: Logged 12,000 miles in your great state.
John McCain: Father was born in Council Bluffs.
Alan Keyes: This is the father who is fighting for the life of his son.
Richard T. Meyer, Burlington: Forty-seven year-old brother with Downs syndrome.
Bauer: Provide the long-term care your family needs.
Hatch: I'm not just talking about it.
Keyes: Shouldn't have government or other bureaucracies dictating to people.
McCain: Medical Savings Accounts, et cetera.
Forbes: Vouchers and coupons.
Bush: Encourage the purchase of long-term care insurance.
Ryerson: You each have 30 seconds.
Bauer: I don't want HMO bureaucrats running it either.
Hatch: Hatch-Waxman bill.
McCain: Republicans are gridlocked by the big money from HMOs.
Forbes: You should be able to choose own doctor.
Bush: Administration has used Medicare as a political football.
Ryerson: Ask a question of one of the others.
Bauer: On the China Issue, you've taken the same position.
Hatch: I was there in China.
Bauer: Being naive.
Hatch: Deng Xiopeng rolled out the red carpet for me.
Bauer: Might be the problem.
Hatch: I slammed Jiang Zemin so hard that he gave me an hour and a half.
Keyes: Texas American town is to be conducted in the Spanish language.
Bush: No es la verdad.
Keyes: Es la verdad, señor.
Bush: Un momento.
McCain: Vamanos.
Bush: Plus, we respect other people's heritage in this country.
Keyes: Made insulting and derogatory remarks about black Americans.
Bush: Comments are out of line.
McCain: How anybody could defend our present system?
Bauer: Politicians in Washington ought to be ashamed of themselves.
McCain: Influence of special interest money.
Bauer: Have to raise $30,000 a day.
Hatch: A 28-minute fireside chat.
Forbes: I hope the fire survived.
Hatch: The corruption of this administration.
Forbes: It's tawdry scheme to try to make money for their friends.
Forbes: Opening up Alaska for exploration?
Keyes: Exploit God's precious resources for the good of our people.
Bush: What do you say to the single mom who's working?
McCain: I've got a tax cut for you and Gov. Bush doesn't.
Bush: Not true.
McCain: Yes it is.
Bush: Not true.
McCain: All hat and no cattle.
Bush: Cute but.
McCain: Cutest when they're true.
Bush: Not true.
McCain: Texas two-step here.
Ryerson: The family farmer is self-employed.
Forbes: Administration talks about but doesn't do.
Hatch: Ten years ago, 22 million farmers.
McCain: People in Beijing eating Iowa pork.
Keyes: Whole centralized banking system.
Bush: That's what ethanol does, John.
Bauer: Food controlled by a handful of corporations.
Forbes: Whole worlds written on grains of sand.
Hatch: Fourteen billion gallons of gas.
McCain: Helped neither consumers nor the environment.
Keyes: Consolidated control of the banking system at the federal level.
Bush: We may have biomass fuel.
Bauer: Ethanol isn't being subsidized.
McCain: Everybody else thinks it is.
Adam Glawe, Des Moines area: How to improve the dignity of the Oval Office?
Bauer: Ronald Reagan would not go into the Oval Office without a coat and tie on.
Hatch: Elaine and I have been married for 43 years.
Keyes: Radical homosexual agenda.
McCain: Feckless photo op foreign policy.
Bush: Women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house.
Forbes: People of seemingly limited abilities could rise to the occasion.
Jessie Clark, student: Concerned about the government overstepping.
Forbes: Trust the parents, not politicians
Keyes: Abolish the Department of Education.
McCain: Choice and competition, that's the answer.
Bauer: Ronald Reagan.
Bush: No second-rate children, no second-rate dreams.
Hatch: The founding fathers were much wiser than people today.
Ryerson: Married couples and families paying an additional tax of $1,400 a year.
McCain: The Social Security Trust Fund is a ticking time bomb.
Keyes: All these folks are going to give you something.
Bauer: Moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic.
Hatch: I like all the tax plans that have been given here.
Forbes: Flat tax would help stay-at-home moms.
Bush: Plan that is realistic. That is doable.
McCain: The president of the United States is not a hapless bystander.
Keyes: What do we call that? Slavery!
Bauer: Under my flat-tax plan, American families make out well.
Hatch: I can be for any of these programs.
Forbes: Most Texans have never seen those tax cuts.
Bush: Sixty-nine percent of the Texans said overwhelmingly, "You're the man!"
Forbes: Six out of 10 districts in Texas never saw the tax cuts.
Bush: Not true.
Ryerson: How do you post the Ten Commandments in schools?
Forbes: The basis of Western civilization.
Hatch: Muslims treat Moses as a great prophet.
McCain: Begin proceedings every day with prayer.
Keyes: Schools in the hands of people who pray.
Bush: Seems like to me "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is pretty universal.
Bauer: Giving each other the Nazi salute in the hallway.
Ryerson: Tougher laws are needed to protect our environment?
Bush: Standards set by agencies that rely upon science.
Forbes: Fashionable things that have no real proof like global warming.
Bauer: Out of control federal regulators.
Hatch: Kyoto Accords could add $3,000 to everyone's fuel bills.
Keyes: Is there any shortage of chickens in the world?
McCain: Theodore Roosevelt was my hero and is.
Ryerson: Trim the closing remarks.
Bush: Message that's positive and hopeful.
Forbes: I'm an independent outsider.
Keyes: Join me in a prayer to Our Creator.
McCain: Give the government back to you.
Bauer: Son of janitor.
Hatch: I was a janitor.
Ryerson: Goodbye.