In my view, sims' refutation is not as subtle as you may think. On one
side he says that he doesn't want to talk about issues such as age in the
campaign, on the other side, however, he added immediately that he won't
comment on his competitor's youth and inexperience. Indeed his reply is
more contradictory than subtle.
The easiest way to crack down this kind of question is try to exclude one
by one the listed choices. For example, Sims doesn't make any judgement
about whether R's claim is correct, so A can be removed. He does mention
the issue of age, so the answer cannot be B; HE mentionned nothing about
which issues are important (C)nor did he say anything about the
contradictioriness of R's statement (D).
In fact, it is true that sims didn't respond directly. In his reply, he
indicated clearly that he didn't want to talk about the issue. That's why
choice E is the right answer.
hope it helps... | 
