John,

While there is no doubt that Donald Trump won the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary, I am alarmed at how quickly people have rushed to declare him the nominee and put enormous pressure on Nikki Haley to drop out.

Even the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee joined the chorus. Shouldn't the RNC remain neutral in primary elections? What's the point in even having a primary if we're just going to let a bunch of pundits and DC insiders decide who the Republican nominee should be?

My question is this: What's the harm in letting the voters decide who they want as their candidate?

In total, fewer than 450,000 people participated in the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary. In 2016, there were more than 31 million votes cast in the GOP primaries.

In light of this, I can understand the frustration Nikki Haley and her team are feeling right now. She has every right to stay in the race until such time as she feels it is the best thing for the party and for the country to suspend her campaign.

When I ran for president in 2016, people told me to drop out also because it benefited them if I did that. But we had a sophisticated delegate operation and we knew we had a narrow, but viable path to win at a contested convention when bound delegates could abandon Trump and vote for me instead on the second ballot.

When it became clear that that was no longer possible, I ended my candidacy because I owed it to my donors and supporters since a path didn't exist anymore.

Rather than seeing primary elections as a threat, party leaders should see them as something to be celebrated as our candidates debate the issues that our party can rally around and use to build coalitions of voters for the general election.

We have serious challenges right now in America and we owe it to future generations to solve them - not kick the can down the road. By skipping the primary and just anointing a deeply flawed candidate, we are dramatically increasing the chances of another big Democrat win.

With Trump at the helm, Republicans lost in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Why in the world would they think that this time around will be any different? You can watch a clip of me discussing this earlier this week: