Battle between ‘crock’ McCain and 'weird' Giuliani (age a factor for McCain)

[rodeodance]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1400642.ece

From The Sunday Times
February 18, 2007
Battle between ‘crock’ McCain and 'weird' Giuliani

Sarah Baxter, Washington

POLITICAL opponents are quick to point out that John McCain will be 72 when he enters the White House if he wins the presidency in two years’ time. His disarming response is: “I’m as old as dirt and have more scars than Franken-stein.” And he never fails to mention his indomitable mother and her twin sister, who have just celebrated their 95th birthday.

Age has become an issue for McCain. He has been hip enough to appear in a cameo role in the film Wedding Crash-ers and hiked in the Grand Canyon with his son last summer, but the risks of voting for a candidate who is already 70 and has suffered several bouts of skin cancer are sinking in with voters.

A Gallup poll last week showed his campaign in a sudden fall against Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, whom Republican supporters said they favoured over McCain by 40% to 24%.

Beneath the headline number, more than four in 10 voters said they would not vote for a “generally well-qualified person” who was 72.

Giuliani, 62, is emerging this weekend as the candidate with the “big mo”, in the words of CNN’s polling analyst Bill Schneider. Another poll on Friday showed the former mayor beating McCain in a head-to-head contest by 53% to 31%, although his drawbacks may simply be less well-known than McCain’s for now.............