Instead of focusing on growing jobs and reigniting our economy, President Obama focused on growing government and tried to remake the United States into the image of the debt-laden countries of Europe. His approach has been more spending, more regulation, and higher taxes.

I'd like to think I'm a serious legislator and trying to get things done.

If you can't even acknowledge that you have to fix Social Security, that's not a very good starting point.

That isn't how I've always felt. As a congressman, and more recently as a senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples. Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way.

Instead of focusing on growing jobs and reigniting our economy, President Obama focused on growing government and tried to remake the United States into the image of the debt-laden countries of Europe. His approach has been more spending, more regulation, and higher taxes.

Our folks have a lot of passion. They're very concerned about the direction of the country and concerned the record debt and deficit and what it means for their kids, concerned about the economy and the fact that we're not getting back on track with the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. And at the end of the day, I think that's going to make the difference.

I told my staff that I'm so boring that I didn't even know I was boring.