Prior to the Republicans’ Iowa caucuses, the leading candidates were crisscrossing the state seeking to gin up support. But bitterly cold temperatures slowed things down a bit for the candidates — including Nikki Haley, who was forced to cancel live appearances and instead took voters’ questions during a live phone-in.

All seemed to be going well given the forced change of plans, as Haley fielded a litany of questions. However, she was done in by the simplest of queries: “Can a man become a woman?”

Clearly, with the radical Left’s push of its gender-bending agenda, especially into female spaces such as school bathrooms, locker rooms, and girls’ sports, it is an incredibly relevant political issue. Indeed, the question is reminiscent of the one asked of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearings by Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Jackson infamously responded: “No, I can’t. … I’m not a biologist.”

Of course, just a few years ago, Jackson would likely have easily answered by observing the basic biological fact that the definition of a woman is an adult female human. Such an obvious answer would not have been controversial because the vast majority of Americans take that fundamental truth for granted.

But today, thanks to the promulgation of the gender-bending social contagion known as “transgenderism,” many people who buy into the bogus notion that to offend is worse than to lie have caved on the issue to the Rainbow Mafia. Or to put it another way, people care more about feelings than facts.

Back to Haley’s latest unforced error: Instead of planting the conservative flag on factually solid ground over this key cultural issue, she stumbled. Rather than simply answering in the negative, saying, “No, a man can’t become a woman,” Haley elected to focus her objection on any effort to treat children with medically based gender-bending procedures and hormones.

Haley argued that prior to age 18, children should not have their bodies permanently changed. That’s all well and good. The vast majority of not only Republicans but the American public writ large agrees with her. But that wasn’t the question she was asked.

In truth, Haley’s answer was a near-total dodge of the real issue. And that real issue is the question of the existence of so-called “transgenders.” The truth, biologically speaking, is that there is no such thing as a “transgender” human being. Humans are sexually binary creatures.

That said, there are people who suffer from the mental issue of gender dysphoria, but their mental state does not change their biological sexual reality. To claim that it could is madness. But claiming that it does not also offends the sensibilities of certain delusional individuals. Haley, clearly not wanting to offend the gender-benders, instead offered up what amounts to a non-answer.

However, by not wanting to offend the gender-benders, Haley did offend those who want a candidate to uphold basic truths. For example, Haley’s answer was “utter bulls***,” blasted journalist and podcaster Megyn Kelly. “The wrong answer and an unnecessary weird pander to the rabid trans lobby.”

Interestingly, another candidate who has in the past professed acceptance of so-called “transgenders” is Donald Trump. Back in 2012, four years before he was elected president, he voiced his support for “transgenders” entering and competing in Miss Universe pageants. “And you have the Miss Canada, which is essentially the Miss Universe,” Trump said then. “It’s the pre-Miss Universe, it’s the screening for Miss Universe — and a woman, transgender was in. … So I will say there’s, there’s great interest, and if you look at it from a show business standpoint, that’s wonderful. But there is certainly great interest.” He cited rules changes in the Olympics without really objecting to those changes.

However, as with abortion, Trump has since changed his tune. Indeed, far from advocating for “transgender”-inclusive rules, Trump is campaigning to end this madness. “No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender,” Trump stated in a campaign video from early last year. He further noted that if elected he would prohibit federal tax dollars from being used to pay for gender-bending procedures.

It would be good journalism for someone to pose the same question about men and women to Trump that Haley fumbled. After all, this is a fundamental issue that has no middle ground.