GOP chairman: Clinton's health and age fair issues

Washington • Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday that Hillary Rodham Clinton's health and age were fair targets for inquiry ahead of a possible 2016 presidential run, as both he and Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who injected those questions into the debate, suggested that such scrutiny might dissuade her from running.

Rove infuriated Democrats recently when he said that Clinton might have suffered a "traumatic brain injury" in a late 2012 fall in which she sustained a concussion. She was hospitalized for a few days for a blood clot, but she and her husband, President Bill Clinton, have said that her recovery was complete.

Priebus, asked on the NBC program "Meet the Press" whether he believed that lingering effects of the injury could impede Hillary Clinton's abilities to serve as president, replied: "I'm not a doctor. What I do know is that the issue is going to come up, as it does for any person running for president. The issues that I talked about are going to be the issues that make her unacceptable" to voters, and he said he did not think she would run "if she has another month like she's just had."

The New York Times