Senior members of Congress and their aides used to give me a hard time for paying too much attention to Representative Mike Pence, an amiable conservative from Indiana who wore his staunch ideology and evangelical Christianity on his sleeve.

More than a decade ago, they dismissed him as a loony lightweight, a naïve true believer doomed to failure in the realpolitik world of Capitol Hill give-and-take. They snickered as he and other perceived gadflies on the right fringe pressed for a ban on earmarks, pet projects that greased the congressional skids and were loved by members of both parties. He irritated his own party’s leaders by proposing extreme budget cuts and complaining about deficit spending even after catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina.

“Katrina breaks my heart,” Mr. Pence, a former radio host who often produced a good sound bite, said back when he was heading a rebellious conservative group in 2005. “But we must not let Katrina break the bank for our children and grandchildren.”

As time passed, it became clear that Mr. Pence wasn’t so much out of sync as he was out in front of the rise of the hard-right Republicans who hold such sway in the House today.