(RepublicanInformer.com)- Former Vice President Mike Pence is taking to the road in some states that will be key to whomever wants to capture the White House next in 2024.
Last week, Pence delivered his first major speech since leaving the White House in South Carolina. He’s set to visit New Hampshire next month. There, he’ll headline the Lincoln Reagan awards dinner for the Hillsborough County GOP on June 3.
Those two states always find themselves among the earliest to hold their presidential primaries. Many candidates who do well there clear themselves a nice path to their party’s nomination, while those who don’t fare well can quickly find themselves on the outside looking in.
Also last week, Pence made an appearance in Texas. That event was also attended by a number of prominent Republicans who have been mentioned as potential candidates for the nomination in 2024 — if former President Donald Trump decides not to run.
Some of those people were former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Senators Marco Rubio (Florida), Tim Scott (South Carolina) and Tom Cotton (Arkansas).
In the speech he gave in South Carolina, Pence said:
“[I’m] a Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order. We’ve got to guard our values … by offering a positive agenda to the American people, grounded in our highest ideals.”
People who attended that event and spoke to USA Today said they believed Pence’s speech was a potential trial run for a future presidential campaign announcement.
Pence even dug into the Biden White House during that speech, saying:
“The Biden-Harris administration has launched an avalanche of liberal policies that have threatened to derails all the progress that we made for a safer, more prosperous, more secure America.”
Despite his well-known stature and the fact that he already served in the White House as vice president, Pence still does face some obstacles to a potential GOP nomination in 2024. As former Republican political strategies Tim Miller said:
“[Pence has] a base of support with evangelicals, which is better than most have, but can he expand out of that?”
A major question for Pence — or any other Republican hopeful, for that matter — is whether Trump himself will decide to run in 2024. If he doesn’t, will Pence be able to win over Trump supporters who soured on him quite substantially in the final days of the Trump-Pence administration.
After Pence, as president of the U.S. Senate, refused to try to stop the certification of the Electoral College results, Trump and his supporters both turned on the vice president. Many Trump supporters were calling for Pence to step down from his position, and called him a traitor in the process.
That’s one big hurdle he’ll definitely have to overcome if he wants to win the GOP nomination in 2024, assuming of course, Trump decides not to run.
