Haley Leads by Example, Commits to Take Mental Competency Test

(RepublicanNews.org) – Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has promised to take a mental competency test and has issued a call to her rivals Pres. Joe Biden and former Pres. Donald Trump to do the same. Haley, who is currently polling at a significant loss to Trump amongst her party’s own voters, used her South Carolina rally on Saturday, February 10th, to hand out competency tests and question whether either man would be able to successfully complete them.

Haley has spoken about cognitive ability throughout her campaign, asserting that any candidate over 75 should take the test. Donald Trump is 77 years old, while Joe Biden, the oldest serving president the US has ever had, is 81.

Despite initially saying that those over 70 should take the test, 51-year-old Haley has since vowed to take the test herself. Haley’s use of her rivals’ age as a campaign point has divided voters. A Newsweek poll found that 75% of American voters agreed that candidates over a certain age should be made to take the test, but some older voters have expressed annoyance at older people being singled out for testing.

Mike Dennehy, the Republican strategist, has warned that the “gimmick” could backfire, with older people making up the largest bloc of Republican voters. Haley, however, insists that her calls for competency testing are not “disrespectful,” rather they represent a desire for “transparency”. Former fellow candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, said that the call for testing was “dead wrong.” In contrast, 72-year-old Asa Hutchinson, former Governor of Arkansas, argued that it would be unnecessary, as voters can gauge a candidate’s mental acuity by listening to them debate other candidates or answer questions from voters at public events.

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has lately embraced Haley’s call for testing, but only if applied across the board. The businessman has been keen to point out Biden’s numerous slip-ups along the campaign trail, referring to him as a man who “can’t put two sentences together,” but he disputes the notion that the test should be based on a candidate’s age.