real tough state. i ve been in a tough state for a while and in 2012 mitt romney won my state by 35 points. i won it by almost 25 points. that is a 60-point swing. west virginia they will look at the individual and make a decision. i appreciate that. i really applaud my wonderful constituents back home. but with that being said, i didn t come here to say, oh, my goodness, if i do this i might not get re-elected. i didn t come here to be here for life. this is not a lifetime job. it s basically i came here to do the best can i and i m going to make a decision. if i can go home and, mark, explain it at home and defend it, i can vote for it. if i can t explain it, there an old saying you can t shine you know what and you can t shine this stuff up and make it look any better or smell any better. that was you can t shine, of course, an auburn war eagle helmet. go ahead. i love auburn. come on. come on. senator, switching topics. to the travel ban you have
right? this is an important issue to a lot of conservatives but the voters who will decide whether she wins or loses she is going to go into re-election having opposed him to a ton of stuff. the white house needs to make this an issue she can t afford to vote against the nominee and i don t know i think they can get there with a lot of them. but i don t know that they can get there with all of them because the countervailing pressure so hard. in part where will the countervailing pressure come from? the primary. a threat that democratic donors will not give her any money. she will need a lot of money. my point is it s all from out of state. i can tell you when you re in state and the area code comes up to your telephone and people from your own state saying you better support this choice. that trump calls from washington, d.c. special interest groups. totally agree. first of all, donors matter a lot from outside of the state. the other thing is every one of these states hav
it s that big for republicans. reporter: i do think it is that big but i think mitch mcconnell and chuck schumer actually do want to fix the senate. i think they actually do want to change how things have been, so calcified and so divided. i think there was a little bit of faith there before, you know, this executive order, before kind of the democratic base lit up. i think the two of them had the sense, chuck schumer might be willing to say, okay, we are going with the president here and mitch mcconnell would not be forced into a situation. he is an institutionalist at heart and not forced to change the rules. i think you re right, now, though. the focus on those. there are ten trump state democrats, eight, what we traditionally call red state democrats, who are going to be the focus of this fight. it s going to be a combination of mitch mcconnell convincing them and chuck schumer letting them and realizing i understand your political calculus here and i m willing to pay the price f
him outside of the mainstream. in his writings and his comments, anything about this nominee that suggests democrats will succeed in saying like bourque, he is, quote, outside the mainstream. think certainly will probably try to do that. no in the mainstream he is a principle conservative in the mold of scalia. what is interesting he may be more libertarian than scalia and a willingness to check the excesses of the president and congress. gorsuch, more than scalia, has questioned the constitutional underpinnings of the regulatory state from demonstrative progresses. now they want the supreme court to check the excesses of president trump and a republican congress, it s possible the more jeffersonian gorsuch might decide more with progressives than the hamiltonian scalia. if one area to center in on gorsuch is it hobby lobby and little sisters of the poor?
and from a conservative state like the liberal senators from a liberty cal state, and if a democratic senate had stopped a republican from selecting a supreme court justice for the last years, and i could do it, i would go to the senate floor and i would say hell will freeze. hell will freeze over before i do anything that is going to allow this to move forward. yes, you re going to be able to pass him. but you re going to do it you re going to have to tear up the rules of this senate and i m going to be fighting every step of the way. that s how progressives feel and chuck schumer s life is a lot more difficult. actually, the interesting thing is in a strange way, what has happened the past three or four days makes chuck schumer s life n more difficult and not donald trump s on this issue because the left has been so energized.