The 2008 Presidential Race's best candidate was gunned down in Florida last night. Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was not a victim of a stray bullet fired by one of his many co-candidates or even by the so-called drive-by media. Rather, Hizzoner was the victim of his own gun; his own index finger pulled the trigger.

Giuliani's common sense stances on debating team topics un-referenced in our constitution (abortion, alien rights, same-sex marriage, etc.) had not suffered anywhere near the predicted conservative backlash.  Likewise, Rudy and his team were doing a remarkable job of minimizing personal and character attacks stemming from marital issues during his mayoral administration.

Talk of the alleged corruption of at least one prominent mayoral appointee, who later became a Giuliani business partner, was also minimal. Even a vicious attack by the New York City firefighters union, insisting that the mayor's administration committed egregious errors in preparing FDNY for a tragedy like September 11, 2001, have been skillfully downplayed by Giuliani in debates and interviews.

That the New York Times renewed its long-standing vendetta against the mayor with a recent endorsement of John McCain was a wake-up call for multi-factional conservatives -- a warning that their failure to stand behind the most overall conservative candidate in the field would result in a RINO or an avowed Democrat winning the next presidential election. What amounted to a left-handed compliment from one of the world’s most respected newspapers would have made a great addition to the conservative talking points of Rudy’s campaign.

Another New York icon once said: “This is like deja vu all over again.”

In September 1999, Mayor Giuliani put together a campaign for New York’s open senate seat with a sizeable war chest -- including a dig-deep contribution from this renegade scribe -- and won endorsements from both the state’s Republican Party and Conservative Party.

With 9/11 then being no more than a cryptic Nostradamus prediction and with no heroic record of his conduct on that sad day on which to run, conservatives throughout the state, nonetheless, had no problem jumping on the Rudy bandwagon.

Giuliani was already admired for his fiscal conservative, law-and-order track record as mayor in which he not only shined-up the Big Apple but turned its books around in the process. It was Rudy in his role as US Attorney who prosecuted and imprisoned organized crime figures the likes of John Gotti before he served as America’s Mayor.

Giuliani’s opponent would be the former first lady with the Louis Vuitton carpetbag. It would have been close and, most likely, would have sucked most, if not all of the residual hot air from the Clinton family’s balloon. However, Mayor Giuliani was forced to quit the senate race suddenly to pursue treatment for prostate cancer.

Second-time supporters -- we again dug deep to be among Rudy’s first presidential campaign contributors -- reckoned that the healthy, feisty mayor would fight tooth and nail this time around to make up for his short-lived run for Senator.

Not just because of the importance of preventing future 9/11’s in New York or any other American city, but because the aspiring interloper who used our Senate seat purely as a stepping stone was running again and would surely end up in the Oval Office if some unelectable candidate were to emerge as her only competition.

Today, even the former mayor's controversial position on gun control has been proven correct.  It is impossible to shoot yourself with your own gun if you're not allowed to have a gun.

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