'Mike Pence is a dead man walking in 2024': conservative

Senior columnist for The Daily Beast and "Reagan conservative," Matt Lewis, recently offered a case for why former Vice President Mike Pence is "a dead man walking" as he considers running for president in 2024.

Lewis breaks down the former vice president's journey as a once revered leader within the GOP who now finds himself grasping for support from former Republican allies and supporters.

The columnist writes:

This past week, we learned that, unlike Ron DeSantis, Pence doesn’t think we should use the coercive power of the government to punish private businesses like Disney. We also learned that, contrary to Donald Trump, Pence thinks reining in our long-term debt crisis will require us to put entitlement reform on the table. And lastly, we learned that, unlike Fox News’ primetime anchors, Pence thinks it’s vital that America support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

During a recent Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, Pence said, "I think it's important that we hold the line here, support the Ukrainians as they make the fight just like [the] Reagan doctrine said."

Lewis argues with a "courageous" stance such as this, the possible presidential hopeful "has no shot at winning the GOP nomination," considering "how far the GOP has diverged from its traditional path."

He notes:

It's easy to highlight how unstable the GOP has become in the last decade. But the most obvious changes involve tone, attitude, temperament, and sanity. Policy preferences have largely taken a back seat to nihilism, showmanship, and culture war battles that don't easily track with our recent past experience. Pence is reminding us that the shift isn't just in style.

Regarding recent criticism of the former vice president's political decisions, in a recent New York Times op-ed, retired conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig expressed his disapproval of Pence's decision to resist a subpoena from Department of Justice (DOJ) Counsel Jack Smith, threatening to take his fight to The Supreme Court.

Luttig wrote, "The former vice president should not want the embarrassing spectacle of the Supreme Court compelling him to appear before a grand jury in Washington just when he’s starting his campaign for the presidency."