Pence could vault to top GOP job if party loses majority
The talk this week among conservative House staffers and GOP strategists is that a Democratic victory in the fall elections could lead to a wholesale junking of the House Republican leadership.
While that would likely lead to a nasty leadership bid for minority leader, the conservatives say that it could lead to the election of Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana lawmaker who heads the budget-conscious Republican Study Committee.
"If we lose, I can see everybody being thrown out and Pence's fiscal conservative team in," says an adviser to House conservatives. It's an unlikely scenario because insiders say that House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner are secure and that, at worst, Boehner would get the minority leader's post. But the staffers said a loss of power could lead to a major party revolt against the leadership, opening the door to Pence, who has led the effort to cut spending and pork.
House sources say that Pence is neither campaigning for the job nor talking about it to aides, but he is championing the election of more conservatives who would likely back a leadership bid. Just today, for example, the RSC highlighted an op-ed he wrote for Human Events in which he says that House conservatives have been the steady group in the chamber.
An excerpt:
The American people should know that House conservatives never lost confidence in our agenda and the Republican Study Committee stood firm in the winds of change. As the nation prepares to render judgment on this Congress, it is a good time [to] make an account of the battles fought by House conservatives to enable voters to assess the modest, but meaningful, progress which conservatives have attained during these troubled times.