There was not much glory in Nikki Haley’s first victory of the 2024 presidential primary.

About three dozen people packed into a windowless hotel conference room in downtown Washington for the announcement on Sunday. There were a handful of reporters (the Epoch Times was represented, if not the New York Times), but the crowd was composed mostly of the D.C. Republican faithful—those especially committed to the seemingly thankless task of promoting the GOP in the most Democratic-leaning jurisdiction in the country.

For one brief moment, they were relevant. They enjoyed it.

As they stood around waiting, they held wineglasses and sang “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless the USA.” Finally, Patrick Mara, the chair of the D.C. GOP, walked up to a lectern in front of a red backdrop and read out the results in reverse order. After giving the vote totals for vanity candidates and those who had long since dropped out, he intoned: “Under the party plan submitted by the D.C. Republican Party to the Republican National Committee that guided this election, any candidate receiving a majority of the votes … more than 50 percent, receives all 19 delegates up for grabs. In first place, receiving 62.86 percent, Gov. Nikki Haley.” The announcement was hailed with a handful of whoops.

There was no televised victory speech. Network TV didn’t analyze the results in detail. And the news didn’t even make the front page of the Washington Post (although an article on the Taliban’s hopes for Afghanistan’s cricket team did). But for Haley, this win was huge. After all, she........

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