Yes, I realize all 10 of these quotes come from the same three candidates, but can I help it if the other eight said nothing I found compelling enough to transcribe word for word?
(10) Carly Fiorina on which woman to feature on the $10 bill:
I wouldn’t change the $10 or the $20 bill. I think honestly it’s a gesture. I don’t think it helps to change our history. What I would think is that we ought to recognize that women are not a special interest group.”
(9) Marco Rubio on whether it’s appropriate to speak Spanish on the campaign trail:
My grandfather loved America; he understood what was so special about this country. (He) instilled in me the belief that I was blessed to live in the one society in all of human history where even I — the son of a bartender and a maid — could aspire to have anything and be anything that I was willing to work hard to achieve. But he taught me that in Spanish because that was the language he was most comfortable in. …
Free enterprise and limited government are the best way to help people who are trying to achieve upward mobility and, if they get their news in Spanish, I want them to hear that directly from me, not from a translator at Univision.”
(8) Marco Rubio on comprehensive immigration reform:
America doesn’t have one immigration problem; it has three. We have people coming illegally. We have a legal immigration system that no longer works; it’s based primarily on whether you have family living here rather than merit. We have people who have been living here illegally — many of them for longer than a decade. We must deal with all three of these problems and we cannot do that with one massive piece of legislation. I learned that.”
(7) Carly Fiorina on the unsolved problem of illegal immigration:
We have just spent a good bit of time discussing as Republicans how to solve this problem. Why have Democrats not solved this problem? The Democrats don’t want this issue solved; they want it to be an issue so they can talk about it.”
(6) Chris Christie on entitlement reform:
This is an issue that we’ve got to talk about — 71 percent of all federal spending is on entitlements and debt service. When John Kennedy was elected in 1960, it was 26 percent. Harvard and Dartmouth say that Social Security is going to go insolvent in seven to eight years. We need to save this program for the good people who have paid into this system and need it, and, if that means the folks like Donald and many of us on this stage don’t get it, that’s the right thing to do because here’s what Hillary Clinton is going to want to do: She’s going to want to put more money into a system that has already lied to us and stolen from us. This government doesn’t need more money to make Social Security solvent. We need to not be paying out benefits to people who don’t really need it. We need to protect the people whose Social Security is the difference between picking between heat and rent and food.”
(5) Carly Fiorina on Hillary Clinton:
Mrs. Clinton is going to have to defend her track record of lying about Benghazi, lying about her emails, lying about her servers. She does not have a track record of accomplishment. Like Mrs. Clinton, I too have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe but, unlike Mrs. Clinton, I know that flying is an activity; it is not an accomplishment. If you want to stump a Democrat, ask them to name an accomplishment of Hillary Clinton.”
(4) Marco Rubio on the need for a strong Commander in Chief:
These are extraordinarily dangerous times that we live in and the next president of the United States better be someone that understands these issues and has good judgment about them because the No. 1 issue that a president will ever confront and the most important obligation that the federal government has is to keep this nation safe.”
(3) Chris Christie on Hillary Clinton’s support for Planned Parenthood:
She believes in the systematic murder of children in the womb to preserve their body parts … in a way that maximizes their value for sale for profit. It is disgusting and the American people need to hear it.”
(2) Carly Fiorina on the Planned Parenthood videos:
Watch a fully formed fetus on the table — its heart beating, its legs kicking — while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’ This is about the character of our nation. If we will not stand up and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us.”
(1) Marco Rubio on gun violence:
The real issue is not what are people using to commit the violence but why are they committing the violence? Here’s the truth: Because you cannot separate the social, moral wellbeing of the people from their economic and other wellbeing. You cannot separate it. You cannot have a strong country without strong people. You cannot have strong people without strong values, and you cannot have strong values without strong families and the institutions in this country that defend and support those families.”
This list doesn’t include Fiorina’s masterful trumping of Trump, but that was a not-to-be-missed moment, too!