(Headline USA) Two Republicans who are seeking to lead their party in the 2024 presidential race are gathering in South Carolina this weekend with a goal at the forefront of their agenda: taking on woke ideology.
On Saturday in North Charleston, Palmetto Family, which lobbies for Biblical values, is hosting Vision ’24. The event attempts to “cast the conservative vision” for the next White House race.
More than 400 attendees are expected to hear from presidential hopefuls, including Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor who was Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador, and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
There is an expectation that much of the focus will be on pushing back against woke affronts to traditional ways of life.
Organizer Mitch Prosser of Palmetto Family says Vision ’24 is shaping up as an opportunity for Republicans to outline their ideas in the state that holds the first GOP primary votes in the South next year.
“You’re going to hear a lot about woke ideology, specifically when it comes to children in school, and in parenting,” Prosser said.
Haley has adopted “strong and proud, not weak and woke” on yard signs, shirts and campaign stickers.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month, she said that “wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.”
For Ramaswamy, being anti-woke is central to his political brand. Leaving his biotech company following pressures for him to “make a statement in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement,” Ramaswamy called at CPAC for “an opportunity for the conservative movement to rise to the occasion and fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes this woke poison to irrelevance.” He later launched his own firm intended to pressure companies to quit ESG initiatives.
It’s a similar vein of messaging that South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, yet to announce his own 2024 bid but expected to be in attendance Saturday, has been making for years. In a 2021 op-ed, Scott wrote that, due to his status as the Senate’s sole Black Republican, he had long endured critique from “woke folk” because “my ideology does not match that which they prescribe based on my complexion.”
Others scheduled to attend include former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Kennedy of Louisiana and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Stumping for GOP Rep. Nancy Mace in November, Gabbard criticized her former party for “trying to push these radical woke policies on us, in every way, in every aspect of our lives.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
