“We have a country to save.”

That was Nikki Haley’s recurring rationale for her presidential run that began in February 2023 and was suspended in March 2024. She questioned the age and mental acuity of both President Biden and former President Trump and advocated mandatory competency tests for presidential candidates aged 75 and older.

In February, special counsel Robert Hur called Biden “a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Haley implicitly concurred and said, “Yesterday was a wake-up call for the country, today should also be a wake-up call for Republicans.” She noted that Trump “has his own mental deficiencies, is prone to temper tantrums and wild rants [and] runs about even with the enfeebled Biden.”

How did the leader of the free world and proclaimed model for democratic governance find itself in this political predicament at a historic moment of maximum domestic and international danger?

The regrettable answer is that this time the elections were indeed “rigged” — by both the Republican and Democratic National Committees. They changed their rules for the 2024 party primaries to ensure that the establishment-anointed but highly unpopular former and incumbent presidents would dominate the early-state primary contests and freeze out internal competition.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, was the........

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