McCain primary opponent: He's too old at 80 to be re-elected

One of the reasons we have such bad leaders in this country is that we're not permitted - by decorum, by whatever - to mention perfectly legitimate reasons that certain people should not be elected to public office. Some people are not healthy enough to serve. Some people are not honest enough. Some people are not smart enough. And some people are simply too old and it's long since their time to retire, but they're too addicted to the trappings of power and prominence and they can't or won't let it go. Kelli Ward, who is running in the Republican primary for the Arizona Senate seat now held by John McCain, is now under fire for saying what should be obvious to anyone: Eighty is awfully old for a man to be starting a six-year Senate term. Chances are your mental faculties are not what they once were, and you certainly aren't going to have the same physical stamina. If it's fair to point out that some people are too young to serve in public office - and it certainly is - why is it not fair to point out that some people are too old?

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It is, but it's treated like it's not:

On Thursday, Ward told MSNBC's Chuck Todd: "John McCain has fallen down on the job. He's gotten weak. He's gotten old," Kelli Ward told MSNBC's Chuck Todd. In a nod to the senator's upcoming birthday on Monday, she added, "I want to give him the best birthday present ever: the gift of retirement." Todd asked the former state senator to clarify her comments, specifically if she believed McCain was too old for the Senate. "I'm a physician. I see the physiological changes that happen in normal patients again and again and again over the last 20, 25 years, so I do know what happens to the body and the mind at the end of life," Ward said. Weighing her medical experience, Todd followed up again: "You feel comfortable diagnosing him on air like this?"

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She did not back down: "Diagnosing him as an 80-year-old man, yes, I do." McCain's campaign fought back fiercely against Ward's criticism. "At the end of campaigns, desperate candidates too often embarrassing themselves by launching dishonorable, personal attacks," McCain spokeswoman Lorna Romero said Friday. "It's unfortunate that Kelli Ward has chosen to end her campaign with desperate fictions." If the polls are any indication, Arizona is going to ignore this and other reasons to send McCain into retirement. That's a shame, because his age is not even near the top of reasons McCain needs to go. He has long been hostile to those who are serious about addressing this nation's very real problems. He opposed the Bush tax cuts largely out of personal spite, and fired a bullet into the head of the First Amendment with his sponsorship of the McCain-Feingold "campaign finance reform" debacle. He worked alongside Ted Kennedy to further the terrible immigration policies that now plague the nation. He calls Tea Party activists "wacko birds." He has also pushed the "cap and trade" nonsense championed by the left as part of its global warming charade.

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And he's way too friendly with the Democrats, and I don't mean personally friendly. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean he actively scuttles Republican attempts to gain the upper hand on procedural and legislative matters out of some nutty reverence for the collegial nature of the Senate. There was a time when McCain was a pretty solid conservative lawmaker, and for the most part I think he's still good on national security and foreign affairs. But on domestic policy he's simply awful, and he has been for a long time. The fact that he's well past his prime is only icing of the cake of reasons to send McCain into retirement. I'm sure Ward is making all these arguments, but sadly the media only pays attention to the one it can portray as mean and horrible. That's because McCain is one of their favorite Republicans - the one who will go on their shows and say how extreme and unreasonable all the other Republicans are. He's been their useful idiot for years, and he needs to be sent into a nice, quiet and completely irrelevant retirement.

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