In the past 10 days, viewers nationwide have watched addresses by two prominent Republicans: former U.N. Amb. and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who declared her candidacy for president Wednesday, and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who delivered the nationally televised response to the State of the Union message Feb. 7.
The common denominator in the addresses by both Haley and Sanders was their call for leadership by a new generation — which many observers concluded was a not-so-subtle slap at Donald Trump as much as Joe Biden.
"We're ready," declared Haley, 51, "ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past, and we are more than ready for a new generation to lead us into the future."
Veteran Republican consultant Jim Pfaff considered her remarks a reference to Trump. Haley, he told us, "is attempting to read Donald Trump out of the race after saying she wouldn't run if he did.
"Primaries are won or lost on perception of future success and good campaign strategy. She's making the [2016 Republican presidential hopeful] Carly Fiorina case, and in my opinion, she is likely to get the same result."
Then there is Sanders.
"It's time for a new generation to lead," she declared. "This is our moment. This is our opportunity. A new generation born in the waning decades of the last century, shaped by economic booms and stock market busts. Forged by the triumph of the Cold War and the tragedy of 9/11.
"A generation brimming with passion and new ideas to solve age-old problems ... yet unafraid to challenge the present order and find a better way forward."
Did these words — evocative of John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural words that the U.S. would now be led by a "new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace" — also imply that, at age 76, the time had passed for Donald Trump to lead?
"I've known Sarah for years and when she says something, she usually knows exactly how people will take it," a longtime Arkansas Republican leader told Newsmax.
"I think it was a message that the party has now moved past Trump," agreed Rex Nelson, longtime top political operative to Sanders' father, former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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