Mike Pence says Republicans 'face a choice' in 2024: populism or conservatism

At an event in New Hampshire, former Vice President Mike Pence took aim at his former boss, calling for the Republican Party to abandon populism in favor of good, old-fashioned conservatism.

At the New Hampshire Institute of Politics on the campus of St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., and billed as a "major speech" by the Pence campaign, Pence said that Donald Trump had promised to run as a conservative in 2016.

"It's important for Republicans to know that he and his imitators in this Republican primary make no such promise today," Pence said.

Noting New Hampshire's status as an early-primary state, Pence said Republican voters "face a choice ... will we be the party of conservatism, or will we follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles?"

In the speech, Pence argued that the party should be guided by what he described as longstanding conservative principles, such as a hawkish foreign policy and free-market economics, rather than a populism he argued is rising on both the political right and left.