As Mayor Giuliani’s audacious dream of bouncing out of a strong Florida primary victory into Super Tuesday faded away and as his ambition to translate America’s Mayor into America’s President fast crumbled, he ventured a prediction which quickly gained currency: whoever wins Florida for the Republicans wins the nomination.

That prognosis assumed that Florida would offer a clear winner, but, as has become a somewhat unsettling habit since the general election of 2000, the Sunshine State split between the two leading Republican candidates. Senator McCain’s narrowest of victories over Governor Romney has settled little.

What little we know is that we will not have the chance to vote for President Giuliani in November and it will take a miracle for Governor Huckabee to become the candidate. Today, Mr. Giuliani will bow out in favor of Senator McCain ahead of the televised debate between Republican candidates. Only those intending to press on are welcome; all except Governor Romney have already run out of money.

Mr. Giuliani’s Florida gambit, which must have seemed so plausible over a good lunch in Midtown Manhattan, has proven to be disastrous. He put all his chips on a single number, gambled, and lost. Mr. Huckabee, too, is left flat on the canvas. He has decided to press on to the Reagan Library debate in Simi Valley, California, tonight and may have reset his sights on the vice presidency, but his barrage of personal assaults upon last night’s leaders over the last month make that outcome unlikely. They owe him nothing. The close finish between Senator McCain and Governor Romney means that Super Tuesday in just six days is even more pivotal than expected. It may eventually take hard bargaining in the much mooted, old fashioned hung convention, smoking or non-smoking, in St. Paul to settle on a nominee.

Mr. McCain’s bold performance, coming after a surprise resurrection in New Hampshire and hard on his victory in South Carolina, will allow him a short breathing space to spend quickly as much money as he can quickly raise. With little cash on hand, the Arizona senator needed to win to continue to provoke interest among national security Republicans.

His lack of economic prowess in this time of high anxiety appears not to have hurt him, but his maverick positions on tax cuts and on campaign fundraising — combined with the fact that some conservatives elements don’t like his friendliness to immigration — may still cost him the nomination. Florida has at least shown that he can win among Republicans rather than with the help of independents in previous states.

In a party that does not like to throw good money after bad, Mr. McCain can point to opinion polls that suggest that he and not Governor Romney can beat both Senators Obama and Clinton in November. Although the presidential race would be tight, with Mr. McCain as the champion Republicans have at least a chance of retaining the White House, even though the winds of change may be blowing through the country. In similar surveys, Mr. Romney loses to either Democrat by double digits, though Mr. Romney shown dogged determination.

Mr. Romney’s financial fortune, however, has not proved the asset one might expect. An ugly vein of class warfare has underlined the Republican campaign, aggravated by Mr. Romney’s well cut suits and his well coiffed hair. Rarely has a candidate had to endure such unanimity of personal dislike from his rivals.

While a long expensive race may cause the governor’s heirs to weep, it would sharpen the governor’s wit in the rough world of national politics. Is he ready yet to take on the Clinton attack machine? Could he prick the bubble of idealistic hysteria that would greet an Obama candidacy?

The defeat of Mayor Giuliani and his imminent departure from the race has deprived us of a home town drag down fight with Mrs. Clinton that would have been brim full of heat, color, fireworks, and drama. Anyone who watched his modus operandi as mayor of New York or saw the sparkle in his eye as he denigrated Senator Clinton in the debates knows what we have missed.

Having led the national Republican polls for the whole of 2007, his chosen strategy of ignoring the early voting states left him seeming arrogant and shut him out of millions of dollars worth of free publicity – and gave a sense that the mayor, like the ambling ex-senator, Fred Thompson, was not wholly devoted to winning the White House. Isolated as he wooed Florida, he failed to catch the imagination of the voters, nor did he appear to have sufficient passion for the race. Senators McCain and Edwards, by comparison, appear incapable of losing heart.

Though tempting, to press on to Super Tuesday next week would have been both imprudent and dangerous for Mr. Giuliani. To lose in New York would have left him irreparably damaged in the public mind So the mayor, perhaps muttering relief at avoiding the debilitating campaign ahead, will leave the national stage to return to Giuliani Partners having retained his dignity and a large part of his luster.

nwapshott@nysun.com