Editor's note. I'd appreciate hearing from you at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Over the past week, when discussing the upcoming Florida primary with friends and colleagues, there was a two-fold bottom line for me.

#1. The polls foreshadowed a tight, late-into-the-evening contest between Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney. I was told that Mr. Romney had a superior organization on the ground, and thus it seemed to make sense to me that he would win a squeaker. Instead Mr. McCain won comfortably, 36% to 31%.

Not being from Florida I simply did not give enough weight to the last-minute endorsement of McCain by Charles Crist, the very popular Republican governor, and the equally popular Republican Senator Mel Martinez.

According to surveys filled out as they entered the polling place, more than 4 in 10 voters said the governor's endorsement of McCain was important to them. Over half of them voted for McCain. And aided by Sen. Martinez's support, McCain prevailed among Hispanic voters overwhelmingly--54% to 14%.

But while important, that was/is not nearly the most important result coming out of last night.

#2. Pro-abortion former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani finished third with 15%. He came in narrowly ahead of former Gov. Mike Huckabee who (although he had very limited resources with which to campaign) garnered 13%. This dismal outcome for the one-time front-runner received plenty of attention, as did press accounts that Giuliani would be dropping out today and endorsing Sen. McCain. (Former Sen. John Edwards left the Democratic field this morning.)

Why so important? There are already stories that argue that while Giuliani was a size 40 trying to wedge his foot into a size 12 shoe, had he been just a little nicer to "social conservatives," he could/would have earned the Republican presidential nomination.

What gives this limited credence is that last year some people who ought to have known better spent an awful lot of time and energy simultaneously cajoling and threatening. Only Rudy, we were told, could defeat the Clinton Juggernaut. And besides--trust us on this-- he would nominate the kind of justices we could admire.

That was the good cop approach. The bad cop warned us if we insisted on our "purity," once Giuliani was president we would be cast into outer darkness--no access, no input, no nothing.

What these pundits miss ought to be kept uppermost in our minds as we look ahead to "Super Tuesday" February 5 and beyond.

First, from the get-go, cooler heads were neither seduced nor intimidated by the "inevitability" argument. Everything that would happen to Giuliani to reduce him from front-runner to also-ran status was obvious to anyone with eyes open.

Besides having a position on abortion totally out of step with the majority of Republican voters, he's lived, shall we say, a colorful life and had made a number of ill-chosen appointments and associations. The only question was whether all this would make headlines (again) before he secured the nomination.

If they came after the nomination, Republicans up and down the ticket would have been taken down along with Giuliani. It remains utterly amazing to me how few "experts" grasped the tremendous danger posed to the entire party should Giuliani be at the top of the ticket.

Second, contrary to virtually everything the "mainstream media" may say, the Republican contenders were and are an impressive lot. McCain, Romney, and Huckabee are formidable and will give either pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton or pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama all they handle come next November. (So, too, would have pro-life former Sen. Fred Thompson, who dropped out.)

Thus it was not as if pro-lifers had popguns to compete against Giuliani's alleged heavy artillery. Giuliani was neither the inevitable candidate nor anywhere near the best.

We will be commenting in this space on these developments up through February 5 and then in depth in the February issue of National Right to Life News. If you are not a subscriber to the "pro-life newspaper of record," please give us a call at 202-626-8828.