The Belittling Control-Freak Dominatrix

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Who'd you bet on in a Mixed Martial Arts match between Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd? You might get the chance. Earlier this week, Krugman called Barack Obama a "sucker" and a "fool," while praising Hillary. Maureen Dowd has now gone after Paul's girl, calling Clinton every name in the headline and a few more.

The theory of Dowd's column today is that while Hillary knows how to shake Barack Obama with her ice-cold demeanor, Rudy will revel in the combat with Clinton. Excerpts from "Shake, Rattle and Roll" [emphasis added]:

• 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.
• Other guys, like Rudy, wouldn’t even be looking for a chance to greet Hillary, as Obama always does. Other guys, like Rudy, wouldn’t care if she iced them.
• But she can tell that Obama does care, that he doesn’t want her to not like him or be mad at him, that he responds to the sort of belittling treatment that she sometimes dished out to her husband and his male aides at the White House, yelling at them and calling them wimps if they disappointed her.
• She is a control freak — that’s why her campaign tried to coach wonky Iowa voters to ask wonky questions — and her male rivals are letting her take control.
• Hillary has her work cut out for her. Rudy will not be so easy to spank.

Maureen obviously doesn't heart Hillary. But she treats Barack about as dismissively as does Clinton, deriding him as "Obambi.' I don't see Dowd as a Silky Pony fan. So who's Maureen's horse in the race? She did write admiringly of Rudy's toughness in a prospective match-up with Hillary. You don't suppose?