Copying models

Is there an easy way to copy one model to another model with identical fields? And is there a way to do this associations as well?

For example: If I have a table "items" which has many "tags", is there a way to copy from "items" to an identifal table called "temp_items" without having to manually iterate over each column? And if so, is there a way to copy the associated "tags" to an identical table called "temp_tags"? Thanks in advance.

Scott