Ensign in the Spotlight: Senator’s profile grows

Mention the U.S. Senate in Nevada, and most people think “Harry Reid.” But Nevada’s Republican Senator, John Ensign, is in the political big time and the right time.

The GOP is down and looking for conservative leadership. Ensign clearly is positioning to fill that gap.

In general, Ensign appears comfortable in Q&A format, this Sunday with CNN’s John King. Here’s an excerpt from their interview (seen below):

KING: New overtures from Cuba, Venezuela, torture, immigration, all thorny issues Congress will confront as a result of the president's actions and travels this past week. Here to talk about those subjects and more, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada. He joins us from Las Vegas.

And, Senator Ensign, let me start with you where we just left off with Secretary Napolitano. She says she would like the administration and Congress to come together and deal with illegal immigration. And many in the White House say, let's do it this year. Is the Congress ready to go down that road again?

ENSIGN: Well, we have a lot of big issues, including health care reform, that are going to take up a lot of the time, especially in the United States Senate. And the House can act a lot more quickly than the Senate in this, a very complicated issue. And we have to get it right.

And the secretary, you know, talked about something I thought that was pretty important. She talked about the employers and, yet, the Democrats have blocked us on renewing E-Verify. That's the most effective program that we have to make sure that employers are complying with the law.

And so I hope that the secretary of homeland security is really serious if she wants to have interior enforcement in the United States, where we're actually making sure that people are complying with the law, including employers that we do continue with the E- Verify program that has been so incredibly successful.

KING: I want to bring Senator Klobuchar in, but before I do, if the Democrats give you an extension of E-Verify, will you go out round up votes among conservative Republicans for giving legal status to those who are here illegally?

ENSIGN: Well, this isn't a quid pro quo type of situation. I actually believe, John, in comprehensive immigration reform. I wish we would have passed it a couple of years ago and there would have been a couple of simple amendments that if we would have been allowed to offer, I believe would have -- the immigration bill would have passed with 70 or 80 votes.

Those two amendments, one would have included having a lot more interior enforcement the secretary talked about, that we don't have enough officers, we don't have enough interior enforcement in the United States to make sure that our laws are enforced. And that was one of the amendments that we wanted to offer.

And then the second thing was, because it's the most controversial, we should have taken the whole amnesty portion out of the bill. You would have had seven or eight years with people with legal status in the meantime that could have shown that the program was working, that we were securing the borders, which is absolutely critical for a common sense immigration policy to be put in place.

We have to have our borders secure. And we could have proven that this program was working over seven or eight years and then you could have dealt with the issue of whether they were going to be given permanent legal status or not.

But take that part out of the bill, which is, by far, the most controversial part of the bill, and I believe that the bill would have passed overwhelmingly and I think it will pass overwhelmingly right now in the U.S. Senate if that is taken out.

KING: I don't want to spend our entire conversation on this because there is so much more to cover, but should it be done this year or should you say, you know what, Mr. President, we have the economy, we have the health care debate, a lot of other things going on, let's wait a while?

KLOBUCHAR: I think it's worth discussing. When you look at what happened last time, I think a lot of what happened last time was the American people had lost faith that there could be order at the border.

And when you look at what President Obama is doing, what Secretary Napolitano is doing, you're starting to see a lot more action there. And I think the American people say, we want to see some order at the border, we want to know that the laws are going to be enforced with the employers, and then they are willing to talk about earned citizenship in those kind of things. So we have to make sure those things are happening first.

KING: Let me ask you about something that is dominating a lot of television news programs this morning, it's on the front page of the newspapers today, these fascinating pictures of the president of the United States standing around smiling and joking with Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela.

They are at the Summit of the Americas. Senator Ensign, Senator -- I mean, President Chavez says he wants to send his ambassador to the United States. He gave President Obama a book. Is that a good thing? Is it a good thing to explore that opening or should President Obama have said, you know what, you called George W. Bush a devil, go away?

ENSIGN: Well, it's not just what he talked about with George W. Bush. This is a person who is one of the most anti-American leaders in the entire world. He is a brutal dictator, human rights violations are very, very prevalent in Venezuela.

And you have to be careful. When you're talking about the prestige of the United States and the presidency of the United States, you have to be careful who you're seeing joking around with. And I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez.

This is -- you know, this is a person along the lines with Fidel Castro and the types of dictatorship that he has down there in Venezuela and the anti-Americanism that he has been spreading around the world is not somebody the president of the United States should be seen as having, you know, kind of friendly relations with.

KING: It's -- there's no harm in being polite in an international forum. But is...

ENSIGN: There is no...

KING: ... there a risk -- now, Senator, hold on.

Senator Klobuchar, come in, is there a risk in the picture if, from that point forward, Venezuela goes off and says -- you know, holds oil hostage or does something that makes it look anti-American, as the senator just said?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, first, look what the president is doing here at the Summit of the Americas. He is reaching out to all of these countries, just like he did at the G-20, I think, very effectively, reaching out to Cuba in a way, putting the past behind us, moving forward.

But when you look at what happened here, George Bush shook Chavez's hand. And this is not a good guy. He has, as Senator Ensign explained, been brutal. He has done things that we do not accept in our country. And all the president did was shake his hand just like George Bush.

And basically when he talks about sending an ambassador here, these are very incremental steps. When President Obama has talked about reaching out to people, so we at least, we are talking to our enemies. It's sure a lot better way to go than we did in the last eight years.

KING: I want to talk about these -- the release of these torture memos. Just this morning the former CIA director, Michael Hayden, was on "FOX News Sunday." And he is outraged about this, as many who served in the intelligence community are. And he said this.

"At the tactical level, what we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al Qaeda terrorist." Making the point that we undermined the ongoing effort to keep the United States of America from being attacked.

Senator Ensign, a mistake to release these memos or has the president already broke with the policy, what is the harm?

ENSIGN: Well, the harm is, is that if we ever return to those policies, one is that they can train against them now. To have them public allows al Qaeda to train against them. I mean, do we really think that having advanced interrogation techniques is something that we don't want to use if we find Osama bin Laden? ENSIGN: I mean, the fact that al Qaeda is still an active terrorist organization in the world, if we need advanced interrogation techniques to use against some of these operatives to keep America safe, that is exactly what we should do.

And then secondly, what the president has done is he has sent kind of a fear throughout the intelligence community that they could be prosecuted in the future. And that is exactly the kind of fear that paralyzed the intelligence community prior to September 11th.

So I think America is less safe because of the release of these memos. This was absolutely the wrong policy for the Obama administration to put out.

KING: I want your views on this, and I want to tell our viewers as I seek them that you're just back from a trip, including to Vietnam, with John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

And while you were in Vietnam, you saw the site where Senator McCain was shot down as a pilot. And you saw the prison cell where John McCain was tortured. That is now a place where Americans can go and be reminded of what happened to Senator McCain.

Was the administration making a mistake to put these memos out there for people around the world to say, that is what the United States did?

KLOBUCHAR: I don't believe so, and for several reasons. First of all, these memos, the things that were contained in these memos, are already in the public eye. We have heard countless reports about these kinds of tortures. Everyone knew that waterboarding had been going on, and the administration admitted that it was going on.

So President Obama took those two factors into consideration, as well as the factor that he had decided that we weren't going to be doing this anymore. So that is why those were released. And he made very clear many secret intelligence documents would continue to be secret.

The other piece of this, contrary to what Senator Ensign said, is that the president has made very clear the operatives, the people doing this work, the front line agents will not be prosecuted. They were simply doing what they were told to do.

And as a former prosecutor, I understand this from a police officer's, agent's perspective. They are out there doing their job every day. They have got to rely on lawyers and people to tell them what is right and what is wrong.

The president is changing that policy and he has made very clear that he is not going to prosecute these front line agents.

KING: Iowa has legalized same-sex marriage. Vermont has legalized same-sex marriage. The governor of New York State wants to legalize same-sex marriage. And, Senator Ensign, Steve Schmidt, who ran the McCain campaign in 2008, says he thinks it's time for conservatives to drop their opposition to same-sex marriage.

What do you say on that point? Should the Republican platform and should Republican politicians, whether they be governors or United States senators, drop their opposition to same-sex marriage?

ENSIGN: Well, you know, what we're seeing again is that the courts, instead of legislatures, have decided this issue. And I think that you're probably going to see it legalized in a lot of the states and eventually it will sweep across the country.

But that's not a position that I support. I believe that marriage should be defined as that between one man and one woman. You want to do what is ideal for children and all of the studies show that the ideal for children is to be in a household with a father and a mother.

Now, that doesn't always work, obviously. We know that. I was raised by a single mom and that's -- you know, single moms can do a great job. But the ideal for children in all of the social studies that have been done out there is to be in a home with a man and a woman. And the government should strive for the ideal, for children especially.

KING: Do you want in on that one?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I think the way to go is civil unions. But I do think when you talk about the Republican Party and the debates that are going on within the Republican Party on a number of issues, what I'm hoping is that they will get to a point where they will work with us on moving forward with this economy.

We have seen glimmers of hope of that. But I think that's the most important thing we need to focus on right now when I talk to the people in my state.

KING: Senator Ensign, Senator Klobuchar, to my left, is both the junior and the senior senator from Minnesota because of the recount. There is only one United States senator from the state of Minnesota. Former Senator Coleman has appealed the latest decision which he lost. Is it time for Norm Coleman to give it up and for Al Franken to come into the United States Senate so that Senator Klobuchar has a partner?

ENSIGN: Well, I think I have a pretty good perspective on this as I was in a very close race back in 1998 against Harry Reid. And I pushed it to the point when I thought, you know, when there was no hope in sight and even though I thought we had some really good issues. But Norm Coleman's case is a lot different than what I had back in 1998. He has some very legitimate issues. There are counties who counted the same kind of ballots differently and the Democratic counties were able to count the -- what looked like maybe votes that should have been thrown out. They were able to count them. In Republican counts and they were not counted.

All of those votes should be treated the same. And I at least think that his appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court should be heard. I believe it should be acted on as quickly as possible so that we can have a resolution to this.

But every vote needs to be made sure that it was counted and counted fairly so that the people of Minnesota know the next time that they are in an election that every vote does count but every vote is counted properly as well.