In a post last September, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote about the path to victory in a potentially wide-open GOP primary: “[Y]ou want to seem conservative enough but not too right-wing, electable but not a liberal sellout, a safe choice for donors who also makes the party’s activists feel respected... [Y]ou win by straddling dispositional and ideological conservatism, raising lots of money, and promising the best chance of victory in November.” Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush could emerge from that rubric, giving primary voters a retread in person or in name, respectively. But those old-breed Republicans may not be sufficiently conservative for a party drifting ever rightward (conservative radio host Mark Levin called Bush a “very good moderate Democrat”).

One dark horse whom ’16 prognosticators have overlooked: Tom Cotton, the 37-year-old junior senator from Arkansas, who trounced old-guard Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor by 17 points in November. A decorated veteran, Harvard Law grad and unapologetic neoconservative hawk, Cotton is a rising star in the GOP who has already nestled into various conservative constituencies.

Now, Cotton has given no public indication that he's looking to run in 2016. A bid to become the youngest elected president in U.S. history would be a stunner, particularly in a party with something of a wait-your-turn tradition. Still, the idea has been floating among politicos in Little Rock, and Cotton has moved aggressively in his political career thus far. As Molly Ball put it in her Atlantic profile, “Cotton has always had a heroic sense of himself.” And the current occupant of the White House, don't forget, ran after just four years in Congress.

Waiting his turn doesn't suit Cotton. “Some people say I’m a young man in a hurry," he likes to say. "They’re right.”

Thomas Bryant Cotton's personal story reads like a political operative’s fantasy. He grew up on a farm in rural Yell County, Arkansas, before he graduated from Harvard magna cum laude and from Harvard Law. Then, he volunteered for the infantry. An Army Ranger, he did stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning a Bronze Star.