Chris Matthews: It’s the lightning round, gentlemen. You have thirty seconds each to answer this question: What did you have for breakfast this morning?
Fred Thompson: Nothing. … Well, um, I nearly had a danish, but I like to keep all my options on the table. So I had the cereal out, and um, the pancakes and waffles and those sorts of things.
Chris Matthews: Maybe you should have stuck with the danish.
Fred Thompson: Hush, Christopher.
Ron Paul: I wanted to have breakfast, but I’m living beneath my means now, because I was living beyond my means, so I couldn’t buy anything for breakfast at all thanks to our inflated paper money. The Chinese take our paper money, but the Denny’s wouldn’t. We need sound money.
Chris Matthews: Governor Romney, what is the square root of 25?
Mitt Romney: 5. But anyway, when I was governor of Massachusetts, and it was time for breakfast, I would get my lawyers together, and we would… discuss the legal ramifications, and come to a decision in due course.
Mike Huckabee: I had corn flakes, because I believe it is a vital matter of our national security that we continue to support domestic breakfast independence, and maintain the agricultural efforts necesary to maintain that.
Rudy Giuliani: This is a great country. I love America. And the best hope the world has, is that Americans should have the breakfast of each of our own choosing. I had a New York favorite, a bagel, which I’m sure Hillary Clinton only started eating when she faked her way into the Senate. That’s what she brings to the table, but we’re too great a country for that. God bless America.
John McCain: Come again?
Chris Matthews: Breakfast, Senator. What did you have for breakfast?
John McCain: Oh, right. I went to the IHOP, and the woman asked me what I wanted. So I gave her the straight talk, and asked for the Grand Slam breakfast. I wholeheartedly support having my own breakfast in the morning.
Tom Tancredo: I was going to have orange juice for breakfast this morning, but because we haven’t done anything about the problem of illegal immigrants, they’re the ones who pick all the oranges. Of everyone on this stage, I’m the only one who will do anything about that.
Sam Brownback: You make sure you’re only talking about those oranges, Tom. As for breakfast, I ate with Senator Biden, and we had our breakfast partitioned onto three plates. One for the sausage, one for the toast, and the other for the pancakes. That’s what’s going to happen anyway, so that’s what we did.
Duncan Hunter: I had nothing, because the last time I went to a Chinese place, they cheated me. And when I went to that Dubai-owned restaurant, well, I just don’t trust them. So I looked around all day at the supermarket, looking for American-grown products, and couldn’t find any!