Posted on 02/21/2023 3:24:08 PM PST by conservative98
URBANDALE, Iowa — Older Republicans say they aren’t opposed to Nikki Haley’s call for a new generation of politicians leading their party.
But when she calls for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75, some of them start to feel insulted.
The 51-year-old Republican presidential contender has made evaluating the mental acuity of elder statesmen a key part of her opening campaign pitch. It’s one of the only ways Haley has sought to explicitly differentiate herself from former President Donald Trump, who is 76. And it’s one of the cudgels she’s deployed against 80-year-old President Joe Biden.
It’s also a risk.
In her short time on the trail, Haley has irked some older voters, the cohort that just so happens to be a substantial and reliable voting bloc within her party.
Nikki Haley takes shots at older politicians in 2024 announcement
SharePlay Video “I do like Nikki’s platform, her plank regarding term limits. I think that’s important,” Richard Ploss, 71, of Exeter, New Hampshire, said at her town hall in Manchester. But the mental competency test? “That’s a little over the top.”
“Well, we’re old …,” his 72-year-old wife, Susan Ploss, interjected. The Republican couple, who own a chemical supply company and previously voted for Trump, hesitated to applaud the line in Haley’s speech and ducked out before the question-and-answer portion of her event.
Interviews with more than a dozen attendees at Haley’s first campaign events in recent days — all but three in their 60s, 70s and 80s — revealed a GOP primary electorate open to a younger standard-bearer but sharply divided over the insinuation that someone their age might be lacking in mental aptitude. Seven said they opposed the call for applying mental acuity tests to elderly politicians. Three thought the testing requirement should apply to people of all ages. And three thought her plan targeting older people was a good idea.
Some political veterans in the key states said they weren’t surprised by those findings.
“I just feel like the competency test was a gimmick to get attention and one that ultimately could backfire, because arguably, the largest voting bloc in the Republican primary is older voters,” New Hampshire-based Republican strategist Mike Dennehy said. “New Hampshire’s population has been aging over the last decade. There are more and more older people coming to New Hampshire to retire.”
Haley’s campaign, in a statement to POLITICO, said she is merely suggesting the type of brief screening that doctors frequently used to measure older patients’ cognitive abilities..
Oh absolutely
Or tax audited annually, but then again they write the laws that allow them to double dip for millions.
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