At a dinner recently, I chatted with a conservative retired businessman who spends his time between Michigan and Florida. I asked him who among the Republican candidates had piqued his interest.

He didn’t hesitate: Nikki Haley. “She’s the adult in the room,” he said.

Other people are paying attention to Haley, too. A word that keeps coming up in regard to the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in President Donald Trump’s administration, is “momentum.”

Haley seems to have it.

“Nikki Haley is certainly in a good position,” said Alice Stewart, Republican consultant and veteran presidential communications adviser. “You want to have the momentum and you want to peak at the right time, and right now she’s got the momentum a month out from the Iowa caucus.”

In the past week, Haley earned the coveted endorsement from the influential Koch network. Through Americans for Prosperity Action, its political powerhouse, she will get an infusion of money and help from activi