Mike Pence’s very bad week

It amounted to a very bad week for Pence at a time when other candidates took clear steps toward 2016 runs for the White House.

After two years of complex negotiations, the Indiana governor was poised to claim a major victory. The Republican who’d once made his mark on Capitol Hill lambasting President Barack Obama’s health care law had struck a deal with the White House to expand Medicaid, but on the governor’s terms. Pence would get to make a series of reforms to the program — and if it worked, he could tout them nationally as a new conservative model.

As opposed to walking tall, Pence suffered a public relations gaffe that upended the news cycle.

His communications staff had made plans for a new website dubbed “Just IN.” As Pence says he understood it, the site would just be a clearing house for press releases and state reports. But an internal memo took the description much further, detailing the roles of a managing editor and an editorial board and indicating the site would publish feature stories and would sometimes break news ahead of independent journalists.

His pollster, Kellyanne Conway, said that while some candidates might not be able to do much to portray likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as inaccessible, rich and out of touch, someone like Pence could be a “lesser-known but better foil for a Clinton candidacy than a true clash of the Titans.”

Rex Elsass, an Ohio media consultant who’s aligned with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for 2016 but worked on Pence’s 2012 governor’s race, touted Pence as a strong vice presidential choice, too — saying his 12 years in Congress and four as an executive are the perfect combination.

“He’s somebody who speaks to the heart of people, and has a leadership quality and a charisma that would be an incredible asset to anybody who was the nominee,” Elsass said.

CNN