GOP woos Mike Pence for 2016, and Indiana governor says he’s ‘listening’

By Philip Rucker and Robert Costa

For a governor who says he is focused squarely on his home state of Indiana, Republican Mike Pence keeps popping up elsewhere.

There he was in Palm Beach, Fla., in February, evangelizing free-market conservatism and drawing a standing ovation from wealthy donors at a private dinner. In Germany last month, he assailed what he called President Obama’s “policy of conciliatory diplomacy.” In Milwaukee, he urged the Republican faithful last week to “never relent.”

Pence is also quietly cultivating influential Washington figures such as Bill Kristol and Gary Bauer, while becoming one of the loudest voices attacking Common Core, a set of education benchmarks that has sparked a revolt among tea party activists.

The moves bear the hallmarks of a potential run for president in 2016 — and some GOP leaders have begun talking up Pence as an under-the-radar standard-bearer who could return the party to the White House, according to interviews with more than two dozen prominent Republicans. They say the talk-radio-host-turned-congressman-turned-governor has the capacity to electrify grass-roots voters while uniting the constituencies that make up today’s deeply divided Republican Party.

“Pence could bridge really every group — the social conservatives, the fiscal conservatives, the foreign policy conservatives,” said Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth and a friend of Pence’s. “He’s not viewed as a fringe guy.”

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-woos-pence-for-2016-and-indiana-governor-says-hes-listening/2014/05/08/967d0ece-d60d-11e3-aae8-c2d44bd79778_story.html