TITLE: How hard is it for a teaching-oriented lecturer to get tenure in mathematics in the United States?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: My questions is different from this post.
Suppose a math's PhD is 

1) not very successful in his PhD program research and fails to find an ideal postdoc.(But he is still eligible to gain a PhD degree)    or,
2) not very successful in his research as a postdoc and fails to find a tenure-track position like an assistant professor.

and he chooses to be a lecturer for a couple of years just to get rid of the heavy pressure of publishing papers but he is still ambitious about becoming a mathematician. My question is, is it extremely difficult for a teaching-oriented lecturer to get a tenure-track position in mathematics(assistant professor at least)?  
BTW, the only example I know about this is Yitang Zhang, whose experience was so special. But in general, I don't know any other examples of a lecturer becoming an assistant/associate professor in U.S.

REPLY [5 votes]: There are a lot of 2-year and 4-year colleges in the US where nowadays the mathematics department prefers to hire Ph.D.s, but where no research is required for promotion and tenure.  So I may disagree with Nate's "most" assertion.  
Now, if you still intend to do research, though: Such places probably have greater teaching duties than a research university, leaving you less time to do research.