I think the Washington Post's Dana Milbank has created a false choice here between "temperance" and "extremism":
For a dozen years, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence were Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives and fellow soldiers in the conservative movement. Last week, they parted ways: one toward temperance, the other toward extremism.
President Obama has not been able to prepare a budget--despite having an entire Office of Management and Budget devoted to the task, and despite knowing the annual deadline.
That darn Mike Pence is bringing up tort reform even though he didn't say a single thing about it during the campaign. No fair, no fair!
You won’t find tort reform in Gov.-elect Mike Pence’s “road map,” the agenda he laid out in his campaign.
The South Bend Tribune puts a snippy little bit of snark in the opening of its gubernatorial race endorsement editorial:
No women or minorities need apply, of course. Diversity has never been the watchword of Indiana gubernatorial politics.
Still, it is difficult to imagine three white males more different from one another than the three candidates for governor this fall.
All those people who whine about negative political ads seem flabbergasted when candidates actually put out messages that are, well, nice:
Indiana's gubernatorial candidates say their campaigns are about creating jobs and cutting taxes, but their first round of campaign commercials, which get them the most exposure with voters, have skipped most of that serious talk.
The Indianapolis Star's Matthew Tully on whether fire-breathing conservative Mike Pence can stay calm and focused and, I guess, pragmatic as governor:
The Indiana gubernatorial race is getting downright ugly, and someone should tell the candidates to cut it out:
Indiana Republicans opened a line of attack on Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg on Tuesday with the argument that he spent too much of the state's money during his time in the General Assembly.
[. . .]
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Mike Pence, the Indiana congressman who is running for governor, is apologizing for a private reaction to the Supreme Court ruling. Fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill say he compared the ruling to the 9/11 tragedy.
Oh, Mike, no, please, please, no:
INDIANAPOLIS — The team of policy advisers assembled by Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence reflects his efforts to assuage social and religious conservatives who have built him into a national brand while catering to business-minded conservatives who have ruled under outgoing Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.
The fact that both Republican Mike Pence and Democrat John Gregg picked female running mates in their gubernatorial matchup drew this odd sex- and race-conscious paragraph out of The Associated Press:
