Indiana Republican Mike Pence struck a unique note at CPAC, turning the typical governor’s presidential pitch against his potential rivals for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Pence noted that some Republicans favor replacing President Obama with a Republican governor rather than a first-term U.S. senator.

“I’m certainly sympathetic to that view,” Pence said during the headline dinner at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “Well, I can tell you what I’m looking for is not somebody that says send me to Washington, D.C., and I’ll run our nation’s capital the way I ran our state capital. For those of us who served in this city we know, Washington, D.C. is not a state, literally or figuratively. I’m looking for somebody who says send me to Washington D.C. and I’ll make it possible for the next person running my state to run it with more freedom and more flexibility.”

That’s an interesting argument, as it makes a play for outflanking other Republican governors who plan to run on their record, while tapping into the conservative understanding that a president who tries to wield a governor’s powers acts unconstitutionally. For a recent example, look to Mitt Romney, who argued that the individual mandate he supported in Massachusetts was constitutional, whereas Obamacare’s individual mandate was unconstitutional.

Yet Pence’s relationship with Obamacare might cause him a problem if he runs for president in 2016.

“In Indiana, we ended Medicaid for all able-bodied adults and replaced it with consumer-driven health care and health savings accounts,” he said at the dinner. “We expanded access to health care not through mandates and taxes but through market-based reforms grounded in personal responsibility and set-reliance.”

Some conservatives see it differently. “[Pence] betrayed taxpayers when he embraced an expansion of Medicaid through President Obama’s healthcare law,” according to the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein..“Any plan that expands the Medicaid program imposes more costs on taxpayers, expands the federal role in healthcare and should be passionately opposed by those who care about the nation’s future. The Congressional Budget Office, in its latest report, said that the federal government will be spending $920 billion over a decade expanding Medicaid through Obamacare.”

If he pulls the trigger on a presidential campaign, that’s an attack he’ll hear from rivals who hope to invalidate his conservative credentials.