DOWD'S HATRED OF WOMEN KNOWS NO LIMITS

We know Maureen Dowd's hatred of Hillary is limitless, but it really does extend to all women, or at least women who don't know their place. Here's the opening of today's column:

The debate dominatrix knows how to rattle Obambi.

Mistress Hillary started disciplining her fellow senator last winter, after he began exploring a presidential bid. When he winked at her, took her elbow and tried to say hello on the Senate floor, she did not melt, as many women do. She brushed him off, a move meant to remind him that he was an upstart who should not get in the way of her turn in the Oval Office.

He was so shook up, he called a friend to say: You would not believe what just happened with Hillary.

She has continued to flick the whip in debates. She usually ignores Obama and John Edwards backstage, preferring to chat with the so-called second-tier candidates....

Is any of this true? I don't know, but let's assume for the sake of argument that it is. What Dowd is saying is that if a woman tries to psych out her opponents, that makes her a "dominatrix."

Men can psych out other men all they want, as anyone who's ever paid any attention to sports knows perfectly well. But a woman? If she competes like a man, she's using a whip. Girls have to be nice all the time, you see.

Dowd, of course, flips the script for Obama:

Obama may be responsive to Hillary's moods because he lives with another strong woman who knows how to keep him in line.

Whipped!

Oh, please. How about this, Mo? How about the possibility that Obama is boxed in by trying to project himself as a conciliator? I'd say he's just struggling to find an answer to the question "If you think incessant fighting is bad for our politics, what do you when someone fights you?" Fight back and you look like a hypocrite; try to move to higher ground and you look timid. But Dowd wants him to fight the bully of the beach who kicked sand in his face -- and that bully is the dominatrix Hillary.

Oh, but guess whose toughness doesn't seem to bother Dowd very much at all? Read this, and note the lack of snark:

If Rudy's the nominee, he will go with relish to all the vulnerable places in Hillary's past. [Dr. Freud, is she saying what I think she's saying there? --S.M.] At the Federalist Society on Friday, he had barely spoken the word "she" before the audience began tittering appreciatively.

He went through a whole faux-bemused riff on Hillary’s driver's license twists without ever uttering her name: "First, she was for the idea, and supported Governor Spitzer, who wanted to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Then she was against the idea. Then she was for and against the idea. And then finally she said it should be decided on a state-by-state basis. This is the only time in her career that she's ever decided anything should be decided on a state-by-state basis. You know something? She picked out absolutely the wrong one. Right? I mean, this is one of the areas that is given to the federal government to deal with under our Constitution, the borders of the United States, immigration."

Rudy laced his speech with faith references, including the assertion that America has "a divinely inspired role in the world" and a mission to "save a civilization from Islamic terrorism."

Hillary has her work cut out for her. Rudy will not be so easy to spank.

Not for the first time, Dowd brings up Giuliani and can't bring herself to say anything truly nasty about him. If he wins the nomination, it's going to be like that all next year. I'm convinced she truly admires the big lug.

Dowd is appalling -- and she will be no matter who the Democratic nominee is. (She loathes all three front-runners.)

Right now, if I were a Democratic operative and a genie said I could choose one media figure to be struck dumb for the next year, my choices being Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Maureen Dowd, I'd pick Dowd in a heartbeat. She's going to have more of a negative impact on the Democrats in '08 than anyone else. Her take on the Democrats is a highly contagious toxin.