A significant percentage of voters think that Senator Mitch McConnell should resign as Senate Minority Leader; specifically, 73 percent of likely voters and 74 percent of Republicans agree with that estimate.
About three-quarters of likely voters would like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to resign from his leadership post, his most negative rating since suffering a second mental freeze while speaking to the media.
While a congressional doctor has cleared him to return to work, 73% said it’s time for the Kentucky senator to retire from leadership.
And according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey shared with Secrets, the feeling is bipartisan. The survey found that 74% of Republicans want him to leave his leadership post and 73% of Democrats agree.
Senator McConnell is 81 years old. He was about three months old when the U.S. Navy handed the Japanese Imperial Navy a nasty defeat in the Battle of Midway. He was a toddler when American Marines stormed the beaches of Guadalcanal. He has had some documented health issues, although it’s unclear as to exactly how serious these issues are:
McConnell has brushed aside calls to step down or retire.
Twice recently McConnell has gone into a nonspeaking daze while addressing the media. While some said it looked like a stroke, a congressional doctor last week cleared McConnell and said the last episode was likely caused by dehydration.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a doctor, wasn’t buying the diagnosis last week. He said, “I practiced medicine for 25 years, and it doesn’t look like dehydration. … To me, it looks like a focal neurologic event. That doesn’t mean it’s incapacitating, doesn’t mean you can’t serve, but it means that somebody ought to wake up and say, ‘Wow, this looks like a seizure.'”
The specific question asked by Rasmussen was “Mitch McConnell is a Republican senator from Kentucky who serves as Senate Minority Leader. Some Republicans have called on McConnell to resign his leadership position because of his health issues. Do you agree or disagree that Mitch McConnell should resign his position as Senate minority leader?”
Based on the replies, a significant majority of Americans are concerned about the current gerontocracy, and not just in the Senate.
Bear in mind that to fix this problem would require a Constitutional amendment to place an age limit on elected office (maybe we can get term limits while we’re at it?) That might not be as unlikely as it would seem at first glance. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll showed three-quarters of Americans want age limits imposed on elected officials – probably because of the number of elderly politicians holding office right now.
A plurality (45%) of respondents who wanted an age limit put in place told pollsters the cutoff should be 70 years old; another 22% said the age limit should be 60; 18% said it should be age 80 while 8% said the maximum age should be 50.
Support for age limits crossed party lines, with 79% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats in favor, according to the poll.
I’ll always be grateful to Senator McConnell for keeping Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court in an epic act of political knife-fighting – that’s something he was always good at. The people of Kentucky have obviously found him as a capable representative for their state in the Senate, as they kept sending him back. But the question remains about the benefit of having an 81-year-old in elected office. And these two aren’t the only surveys documenting that concern.
As Robert Heinlein once said, “Going to the showers is the best part of the game.” It’s time for the conversation on this Constitutional amendment to get started.
