Nikki Haley's opening pitch to 2024 voters is simple: It's time for a new generation of leaders.
"America is not past our prime, it's just that our politicians are past theirs," Haley said in her campaign kickoff speech last week.
It's one of several shots Haley, 51, has taken at President Biden, 80, and former president Trump, 76, over their ages.
If a December USA Today/Suffolk University poll is any indication, Haley is right that voters are hungry for fresher faces. The survey asked voters to build their hypothetical ideal presidential candidate. Fifty percent of voters said they would most like a candidate to be between 51 and 65 years old. Twenty-five percent said they would want a candidate who is 35 to 50 years old, while just 8 percent said an ideal president would be 66 to 80 years old.
David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center, told me this week that while the results were "not great news" for Trump and Biden, age is unlikely to be a huge factor in the Republican primary because the support of voters with a strong preference for younger candidates will likely be split among several contenders.
"There's fertile ground for a young fresh face in the Republican primary, but when you insert multiple young fresh faces against the 800-pound gorilla in the room . . . it's going to be hard to take the gorilla out," he said.
However, if a binary choice emerges between a younger candidate (in a primary or general election) and either Trump or Biden, then age becomes a larger vulnerability for Trump and/or Biden.
"If your family is starving for cereal and the only cereals on the shelf are corn flakes and Wheaties and you really want Special K or shredded wheat, you're going to go with what's on the shelf," he said. "What basically is on the shelf right now, the most visible, easily attainable cereal for consumption by the voting public is the more traditional bland choices and the ideal selection for voters/consumers is not on the shelf."
"If the political parties don't produce a brand that meets the ideal characteristics then people are going to consume what the choices are, even though they're non-ideal to the voting public," Paleologos said.
NR's John McCormack asked several senators who are likely to offer key endorsements in 2024 about candidate age last week. Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told McCormack that Biden is "too old to serve his current term" and "sadly, is in the midst of serious mental decline." He dodged when asked if Trump is too old to serve another term: "That's a decision that's going to be made by voters."
Asked about Trump's 2024 bid, Senator Todd Young (R., Ind.) told McCormack, "I think people are ready for a new leader, period," but said he thought it was "superficial" to focus only on a candidate's age. While he said he is a "fan" of Nikki Haley, he said he has not decided whom he'll endorse in 2024. Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) said he does not plan to endorse in the primary and will support whoever the 2024 nominee is.
Several Democrats defended attacks against Biden's age, including Senator Chris Coons (D., Del.), a longtime Biden ally who told McCormack: "I don't think [President Biden] needs to respond to that argument. I think his strong record of leadership over the last two years [and] his forceful, agile, very capable State of the Union speech more than answers that question or concern."
Senator Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) similarly said Biden's State of the Union was a strong argument that Biden is not too old to serve a second term. Senator Elizabeth Warren said that rather than age, the question is "who's got the ideas and who's got the fight in them to make it happen."
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told The Hill last week that Republicans have failed in their attempts to play the age card.
"I'm not sure what they think they're accomplishing," Bates said. "The trend is not good for them."
But GOP strategist Colin Reed told me he thinks age is "poised to play a large role — and rightfully so."
"If you've got an 82-year-old incumbent and a 78-year-old that are running for the most stressful, high-stakes job in the world, it certainly begs the question not so much about their age, but about their capability of executing the responsibilities of office," he said. "It's not the most pleasant of topics but it certainly is fair game for challengers on both the left and the right."
While Biden was largely derided as having hidden in his basement during the 2020 campaign, he won't have the Covid pandemic as an excuse to avoid the press and the public this time around. It will fall on the media to press Biden on his competency, Reed said, while younger candidates must raise the age issue in a way that focuses on qualifications and capabilities and is "not seen as unfairly denigrating all people over a certain age, given that seniors tend to vote in force and are some of the most reliable and consistent voting blocs, if not the most reliable voting bloc in this country."
Conversations around candidate age are not new, Reed noted. He worked as the rapid-response director for Sarah Palin when she was John McCain's running mate in 2008 and recalled that the Arizona Republican faced questions "every day" about his age. McCain was 71 at the time — nearly a decade younger than Biden.
Thomas D. Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general and longtime Republican strategist, told me he's sure the age issue will be relevant but suggested that people had "better be very careful about how they make that argument," echoing Reed's comments about alienating older voters. He said Haley's proposal to subject politicians over 75 to mental-competency tests shows a "little bit of ageism."
Nonetheless, Rath expects Republicans will "sort things out" among themselves in the primary and then have the age issue to use against Biden in the general.
Rath is not the only one who is critical of Haley's mental-competency test proposal. When I spoke to Vivek Ramaswamy this week ahead of his own 2024 announcement, he said he would not support such a test.
"This idea of making this about biographical issues, rather than about the content of vision, I think would be a mistake," said the 37-year-old millionaire entrepreneur and author of Woke, Inc. A competency test is a show of identity politics rather than a practical solution, he added.
NR's Andrew C. McCarthy wrote a piece calling Haley's mental-competency test idea a "clown-show proposal." He suggests she shouldn't undercut her brand by "proposing something that would be patently in violation of the Constitution you want people to believe you will preserve, protect, and defend."
In other new-and-now 2024 developments: Florida governor Ron DeSantis kicked off a pro-police tour in Democrat-run cities across the country this week, beginning in Staten Island. On Wednesday, Trump is slated to visit East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train derailment that dumped toxins into the area and forced evacuations of residents. Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) on Wednesday will kick off his "Faith in America" listening tour in Iowa.
Former vice president Mike Pence said Wednesday that while he "fully supported" Florida's Parental Rights in Education law, he has "concerns about the follow-on." "Disney stepped into the fray, they lost. The idea of going after their taxing authority — that was beyond the scope of what I as a conservative, a limited government Republican, would be prepared to do."
Pence's comments come after Haley said last week that, on the issue of keeping sexual content out of public education in the early grades, the Florida education law doesn't go far enough.
On the Democrat side, failed 2020 candidate Marianne Williamson recently said she is "preparing an important announcement on March 4th" as America "gears up for the 2024 presidential election."
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