FT. LAUDERDALE, FL - Let's start with the Democrats, because as consequential as the Republican outcome was last night, the race on the Democratic side had consequences as well.

Bill Bennett called it an ambush. I'd characterize it as an old fashioned mugging. Clinton came into Florida last night and gave what amounted to a victory speech, the first portion of which was carried live by all the cable networks. The front page of this morning's Miami Herald provides another indicator of last night's vote: under a banner headline "A Florida Boost," the paper gives equal billing to both the GOP and Democratic contests, with side by side pictures of John McCain and Hillary Clinton smiling and waving to supporters. The subhead just above Clinton's picture -- "Clinton dominates Obama and takes bragging rights heading into Super Tuesday" -- makes only the vaguest possible reference to the fact that the contest was meaningless for Democrats.

The Washington Post's treatment of yesterday's results is vastly more fair, and the New York Times doesn't mention Clinton at all on its front page, instead focusing extra attention on Giuliani's humiliating defeat.

So, obviously, the media's handling of the Democratic results in Florida is far from uniform, but to the extent the idea that she scored a meaningful victory here enters the consciousness of the Democratic electorate at all in upcoming February 5th states, it works to her advantage. Her campaign is smart to try and wring whatever positive spin it can out of Florida, even though in doing so they're being accused of violating the spirit of the pledge signed by all the Democratic candidates. But these are the Clintons, after all, and this ain't beanbag. Obama should have seen the mugging coming.

Turning to the Republicans, it seems to me it's hard to overstate how important of a victory it was for McCain. He accomplished three things of significance:

1) He beat Romney handily in a closed Republican primary. Despite losing self-identified conservatives 40 to 27, McCain ran better than Romney with large swaths of Republican voters across the state.

2) He knocked Giuliani out of the race and, better yet, will pick up his endorsement today. That puts McCain in the driver's seat to win the 201 winner take all delegates up for grabs in the Northeast on Tsunami Tuesday. Add 57 delegates he won last night, the 54 more he will get from winning Arizona on Tuesday, and the delegates he already had from New Hampshire and South Carolina, and McCain is already more than a third of the way to the magic number, not counting California and Illinois, where he already leads in the polls.

3) He has put enormous pressure on Romney's biggest asset: his pocketbook. Romney has already spent something like $17 million of his own money during the first 9 months of 2007. His FEC reports for Q4 2007 will come out tomorrow, and it's rumored the filing will show him spending perhaps as much as additional $25-30 million in the final quarter of last year, putting him close to $50 million thus far. To compete seriously on February 5th and to overcome, or at least try and neutralize McCain's momentum coming out of Florida, Romney is going to have to make another big financial commitment. Given he's currently at a disadvantage in the race, is Romney willing to double down and pull the trigger on putting in another $35-50 million to try and extend the contest? I guess we'll know the answer soon enough.

As the contest moves on and shifts focus, one thing is for sure: the race in Florida was everything it was advertised to be.

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