THOUGH IT ONLY REQUIRES A COUPLE OF VERTEBRAE TO BEAT NEWT:

It wasn't his campaign's brains and brawn that made the difference. It was the candidate's backbone, on graphic if belated display, that propelled Mitt Romney to a game-changing Florida win.

Romney will never totally dispel those whispers on the Republican far right that he lacks ideological conviction.

But his muscular performance in last week's two debates did more than dismember Newt Gingrich and retrieve the momentum Romney dissipated in South Carolina.

He also offered skeptics desperate to be rid of President Obama compelling evidence he has the inner steel and brawler's DNA to get in an incumbent President's face this fall -- arguably the last great hurdle to his inevitability.

"You can't have an aggressive strategy without an aggressive candidate," one of Romney's confidants told the Daily News. "Only the candidate can demonstrate real strength, and he showed his spine at exactly the right moment."

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