Pence for president — the potential darkhorse GOP candidate for 2016

“Pence for president.”
Who?

Washington insiders are certainly familiar with conservative Republican Mike Pence, the former congressman who now serves as governor of Indiana. The American public? Not so much.

But over at The Daily Caller, Matt Lewis has made a fairly compelling case that Pence, who served in House GOP leadership for some time, could be the dark horse candidate for president in 2016.

Republicans fare best when they nominate governors (not senators) for president, Lewis writes, and Pence’s background and persona fit the bill.

Here’s the lead-in for Lewis’ piece:

“He’s more charismatic than (Wisconsin Gov.) Scott Walker, more conservative than (New Jersey Gov.) Chris Christie and, unlike so many of the top-tier 2016 Republicans, he has actually
run a state.

“So why isn’t Indiana Gov. Mike Pence generating the kind of buzz worthy of a top-tier candidate?

“Probably because while his opponents have been show horses, he’s been a work horse. And that makes him a dark horse.”

Lewis argues that Pence has a solid resume, “silver fox”-style good looks, an ingratiating speaking style due to his early-1990s stint as a talk-radio host, and he is a “full-spectrum”
conservative.

Pence has all the social conservative bona fides of a Mike Huckabee, but unlike Huckabee, he’s also beloved by fiscal conservatives, according to Lewis. Chris Chocola, president
of the influential, fiscally conservative Club for Growth, told Lewis a while back that Pence’s “conservative credentials are really unquestionable” and that he “appeals to every group that (Sarah) Palin appeals to — and probably a little more.”
Pence engenders support from tea party voters and traditional evangelical voters alike. David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) has predicted that Pence will be the first “Teavangelical” president.

Yet, I wonder. With the tea party engaging in such scatter-shot politics over the past year and increasingly embracing a libertarian point of view, can they unite with evangelicals? Will the Religious Right support proposals to close most U.S. military bases overseas or to eliminate social programs for the poor?

We shall see.

On Sirius/XM’s POTUS channel yesterday, Lewis said in a satellite radio interview that the biggest question is whether Pence wants to make a run. With all the rigors of constant travel and 24/7
cable news and social media that presidential contenders face these days, a candidate must be almost obsessed with capturing the White House in order to have even a modestly successful showing in a campaign for American politics’ ultimate prize.