Give that it's a Divine class, I expect it will use Domains (that may have some use from the Warpriest) and will probably walk around smacking things and having some kind of benefit to people they stand next to.
Yeah, IMO if Essentials seeks to recapture some old school feel, one way to do it is to have paladins with Cha as their best score. However, this time around Cha can "do something" directly relevant to paladin attacks, as opposed to being "merely" an extra requirement.
But for me the biggest reason for having paladins use Cha instead of Str has more to do with making paladins feel different than fighters. I think a paladin should be a warrior whose boldness, presence, and strength of will form the foundation of their faith and fighting style. I feel this is best represented by Cha. Being strong and/or hardy should still matter for paladins, but I feel it should be secondary to the other concerns. YMMV of course.
I suppose one way they could do a paladin is to treat it as an alternate build of fighter that has access to divine powers. This would be much like how the Essentials assassin can use both martial and shadow powers.
