FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: 2014 Elections
Interview
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A red wave swept the country this week, giving Republicans control of Congress including their first Senate majority since 2006. We want to introduce you to some of the new members of the Senate, as the GOP sets its agenda. We'll talk with Colorado's new senator, Gory Gardner, in a moment.
But first Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito is West Virginia's first female senator ever, and its first Republican senator in more than half a century.
Senator-elect, congratulations, and welcome to "Fox News Sunday."
SENATOR-ELECT SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, R-W.VA: Thank you. Wonderful to be on.
WALLACE: President Obama called you on election night, one of the few newly elected Republican senators he reached out to. Did he give you any sense that he's willing to compromise?
MOORE CAPITO: Well, he did say and he congratulated me, which was very welcome. And the call was wonderful, of course. But he did say that I think we can find common ground to help the people of West Virginia. And as you know, in West Virginia, the president is very unpopular. So, I appreciate that sentiment, I want to find that common ground, I look forward to that.
WALLACE: But he didn't put much meat on the bones?
MOORE CAPITO: Well, no, it was late. You know, I'm going to take what I can get at this point.
WALLACE: In his news conference the day after the election, the president was unwilling to say that he's going to change any policies or change the way he does business. And he also seemed to almost dismiss the message from the voters on Tuesday night. Take a look.
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OBAMA: To everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you. To the two thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you too.
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WALLACE: Do you think the president gets it, gets how unhappy voters are with him and the Democrats?
MOORE CAPITO: You know, not really. With those comments that we saw right after the election, when he says he hears two thirds of the people that are not voting, I don't -- what kind of message could he possibly be getting?
I think the dysfunction, the gridlock, the overreaching -- certainly in my state, the overreaching by certain regulatory bodies is really I think eating away at the confidence in his ability to lead and ability to get things done. I don't believe that -- you know, I want to believe that we can do this. I do believe we can and we must, and I hope the president kind of gets on board a little bit more than he did in that first press conference.
WALLACE: There's also a question for Republicans, and that is whether they compromise with the president or whether they confront him. And there seemed to be a split in the days after the election within the Republican Party, various comments made by the new presumptive Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz.
Let's take a look at what both of them had to say.
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MCCONNELL: I want to first look for areas that we can agree on, and there probably are some.
SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TEXAS: The era of Obama lawlessness is over.
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WALLACE: So, are you with McConnell, let's look for areas of agreement, or Cruz, who apparently wants to draw bright lines versus this president?
MOORE CAPITO: Well, let's look at one thing the president did do for the Republican Party on election night. He unified us. We have majorities -- a larger majority in the House, we have the majority in the Senate, many states -- my state hasn't elected a Republican senator since 1956. So -- and part of it was the dissatisfaction with the direction the president is going.
I think what we would be smart to do in my opinion, the way I want to move forward is to score some small victories, bipartisan, with the president, showing and demonstrating to that disaffected majority of Americans out there that we can begin to solve the problem.
WALLACE: Such as?
MOORE CAPITO: Such as Keystone pipeline, such as some tax reform, a transportation bill, a six-year transportation bill that --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Do you think the president is going to back down on Keystone pipeline?
MOORE CAPITO: I think he'd be really smart to do it when he sees a margin in the Senate of over probably 65 votes. I would hope so. I mean, if we're looking at jobs, if we're looking at infrastructure, we've got an energy growth in our country that we really need to capitalize on.
WALLACE: Let me talk about one of the big issues in your campaign, which was what you call the "war on coal," which is obviously a billing deal in coal-rich West Virginia. How aggressive are you going to be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations?
MOORE CAPITO: Extremely aggressive. That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job, the electricians, the tire distributors, all the other jobs that go with coal mining.
Coal is our base load fuel. The president's policies is disenfranchising part of the country -- my part of the country. We've been picked as a loser. I'm not going to stand for it. Rolling back the EPA regulations is the way to do it.
WALLACE: Finally, how do you feel about the president getting a lot of things done in this lame duck session of Congress? For instance, just yesterday, he nominated Loretta Lynch to be the new attorney general. How do you feel about his effort to try to get that -- her confirmed by the lame duck session as opposed to waiting for the new Senate with members like you getting to vote to it?
MOORE CAPITO: I think what you see -- the rapid change on both houses particularly on the Senate, I think you're going to see a lot of this push the first of the year. I think that will give us the time to have the debate and deliberation that the Senate hasn't had over the last four years, that we need to have, whether it's a nominee for attorney general.
WALLACE: Do you think it would be a mistake to try to push her, jam her through in this session?
MOORE CAPITO: I do, I do. I think that if we're going to have an era of good faith here, we need to begin the confirmation process for one of the most important jobs in the country and that's the attorney general.
WALLACE: Senator-elect Capito, thank you.
MOORE CAPITO: Thank you.
WALLACE: Thank you for coming in, and please come back.
MOORE CAPITO: I would love to. Thank you.
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