Will Tucker Carlson be a kingmaker in the 2024 race?
Mabinty Quarshie
Tucker Carlson may no longer have his prime-time spot on Fox News to reach millions of Republican voters, but that hasn't stopped him from playing a burgeoning role in the race for the GOP's presidential nomination.
Carlson sat down with several 2024 Republican candidates at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday, although the most high-profile candidate, former President Donald Trump, wasn't there. Instead, Trump's rivals Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) attended and took the stage with Carlson.
The summit and the group, led by Bob Vander Plaats, convenes evangelical conservatives in the Hawkeye State, which will begin the 2024 nominating race with its first-in-the-nation caucuses on Jan. 15. And it could help Carlson reemerge as a dominant conservative kingmaker in the race.
"Bob Vander Plaats and Tucker Carlson are generating mutually reinforcing legitimacy," Scott Huffmon, political scientist and founder of the Center for Public Opinion & Policy Research at Winthrop University, told the Washington Examiner. "Vander Plaats has the ear of Iowa evangelicals and Carlson still carries the imprimatur of the seasoned culture warrior."
more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/tucker-carlson-kingmaker-2024-gop
