Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley reacted to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) freezing up in some sort of medical episode Wednesday, the second time since July, calling the U.S. Senate “the most privileged nursing home in the country.”
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who served as U.N. ambassador under former President Donald Trump, appeared on Fox News and repeated her call for competency tests for older politicians — when Haley announced her White House bid earlier this year, she called for competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.
“In the America I see, the permanent politician will finally retire,” the Republican politician said at the time. “We’ll have term limits for Congress. And mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”
On Thursday, Haley said of the 81-year-old GOP Senate leader, “It’s sad. No one should feel good about seeing that any more than we should feel good about seeing Dianne Feinstein, any more than we should feel good about a lot of what’s happening or seeing Joe Biden’s decline.”
“What I will say is, right now the Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country,” she continued. “I mean, Mitch McConnell has done some great things and he deserves credit. But you have to know when to leave.”
Haley not only called for cognitive testing, but she also pressed for term limits.
“That is why I’m strongly in support of term limits in this country,” she said. “I think that we do need mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75. I wouldn’t care if they did them over the age of 50. but these people are making decisions on our national security. They’re making decisions on our economy, on the border. We need to know they’re at the top of their game. You can’t say that right now looking at Congress.”
“We need to start getting new faces, new voices, younger generations involved in our government. And we need to have everybody else understand when it’s time to go,” she concluded.
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Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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