The Republican Debate in New Hampshire - TRANSCRIPT

Paul comes off as an idiot - again. Huckabee and Romney are on the defensive - but as usual, Thompson gave answers to make me glad I support him.

Thompson On Illegal Immigration:

[Y]ou can have enforcement by attrition if you obey the law and you enforce the law that's on the books today. If we started securing the border as we're supposed to do -- and we're all in agreement that it must be done now. I mean, we arrest thousands over the years of people from countries that are state sponsors of terrorism. I mean, it's essentially a national security issue as well as an issue of fairness, as well as a social issue with regard to what states and communities have to face nowadays and workers who are in competition with this.

If we enforce the borders so people couldn't go back and forth, if we assisted employers with a system that we now have on the books, that 20(,000)-30,000 employers now are using, a verification system -- so you could essentially punch a button, the Homeland Security folks will tell you whether or not this person is illegal on the front end -- and if we -- and if we stop sanctuary cities, where we're telling the local people that you can't cooperate with the federal authorities, so -- and stop inducing people to come here with employment and protection under sanctuary cities, as Mayor Giuliani did when he was mayor of New York, then we would have -- we would have attrition of these numbers and start reversing them.

Thompson on Change:

Everyone has kind of a wish list. I think it's most important, though, that a president of the United States understand that our principles -- our first principles are based on the Constitution of the United States, understanding the nature of our government, the checks and the balances, the separation of powers that our founding fathers set up a long time ago. There's a reason for that. They knew about human nature. They learned from the wisdom of the ages. They set the government up according to that.


They set the powers out in the Constitution of the federal government and they basically said, "If the powers aren't delineated in this document, they don't exist." And then we got the 10th Amendment that says if they're not delineated, they belong to the people and to the states. That's fundamental to everything else. And then we grew from that principles, such as a dollar belongs in the pocket of the person that earned it unless the government can make a case that it can spend it better; you don't spend money that you don't have; and you certainly don't spend your grandchildren's money with debt that they're not at the table when the decision has been made to spend it.

Thompson on Energy Independence:

You know, the oil price basically is a function -- or a result of supply and demand. We can throw rocks at each other and we can demagogue the issue and all that, and of course, there's plenty of it.

But getting back to your original question, Charlie, I mean, nobody knows what the price of oil is going to be in the future, but I think you can make a good case that it's going to be -- it's going to be very high. Because it's not just us. The Chinese are demanding more oil, going around the world and making all kinds of deals with dictators and causing all kinds of other problems because of it. India. There are a lot of growing economies out there. And that's the world we live in for the immediate future. We're not going to be energy independent in a few years.

Now, we have to be more diversified. We're getting too much oil from trouble spots in the world. Everybody knows about the Middle East. Everybody knows about Chavez in Venezuela. And we're just too dependent on the wrong kinds of people. And we need to do all the things that John mentioned -- as I recall the things he mentioned, plus cleaner coal technology plus using the oil reserves that we have here in this country, and nuclear, more nuclear.

But -- but, you know, we are not -- you know, we're not a nation that regulates the profits or the losses of -- of our economy. We want people refining that oil and we want people -- and there hasn't been a refinery built here in a long time in this country. And we want -- we want the oil to flow. We need for it to flow right now, while we work our way into a more diversified situation.