Back in 2006, Indiana Congressman Mike Pence proposed his own "compromise" amnesty plan. He may have gotten the idea for that plan from a proposal by billionaire heiress Helen Krieble, and also in 2006, Krieble, Pence, and Dick Armey of Freedomworks appeared at an event to promote comprehensive immigration reform.

The latest bad idea from their general camp is to try to draft Pence to run for president. Those backing the idea include Armey, Chris Chocola of the Club for Growth (known around here as the "Club for Profits at Any Price"), former Rep. Jim Ryun, and Brent Bozell.

Per Armey:

“What I see across the board, especially with the party activists, the energetic people, is a sharp division between those personalities you would call ‘old news’ personalities and newcomers... And almost anybody, if you said, ‘who will be on the field for the presidential sweepstakes from the Republican side,’ all the names you would name today - (Newt Gingrich), (Mike Huckabee), Sarah Palin and (Mitt Romney) - these are all old news names and, quite frankly, I don’t think they have much of a chance.”

While Jonathan Martin and Kasie Hunt of the Politico try to claim (link) that the appeal to Armey and Chocola is due to the claim that Pence "is viewed as a politician who would actually govern as a social and fiscal conservative" and that the "Draft Pence coalition can be best described as a group of insiders that prefers outsiders - and especially those focused on social issues like abortion and gay rights".

It's more likely that Armey and others in the "Profits at Any Price" school don't really care all that much about social issues; the tea parties - a group more or less controlled by Armey, the Koch family, and other "fiscal conservatives" - have deliberately avoided social issues. Rather, Armey et al see Pence as a salable commodity who'd be "good for business" (if you know what I mean).

1/29/11 UPDATE: Pence has decided against running for president. Whether he'll run for something else isn't yet known.