Oh, how the political winds shift.

One week, Nikki Haley was riding high on an endorsement from New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and rising poll numbers. The next week, she is choking on a question about the civil war, losing support from the anti-Trump side by suggesting she’d pardon the former president, and dealing with an opponent who has little chance of victory attacking her for both.

Let’s start with Haley’s gaffe. When a constituent asked the former South Caolina governor about the cause of the civil war, her response was, “The cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.” The noticeable absence of the word “slavery” gave anti-Haley forces an opportunity to attack.

However, as Matthew Hennessey points out in the Wall Street Journal, there’s a “long and short answer” to this question. And while Haley gave a short answer absent the mention of slavery, her answer was not incorrect. The Civil War was about state versus federal power through........

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