Maureen Dowd and Minced Michelle Obama

Maureen Dowd does a 180 in her column, "Mincing up Michelle."

What a difference a year and a couple of months make!

In April of 2007, Dowd was not singing the praises of Michelle Obama, nor was she warning of the Republicans' intentions to attack her.

To the contrary, in "She's Not Buttering Him Up," Dowd expressed her discomfort with Michelle and Barack Obama's shtick on the campaign trail. Back then, Dowd criticized Michelle for tweaking her husband.

“I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There’s Barack Obama the phenomenon. He’s an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right?

“And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive. For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn’t get stale, and his 5-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is.”

Dowd was annoyed by Michelle's comments, but she saved her most stinging remarks for Michelle's failures to rein in her husband's dealings with the sleazy, and now convicted, Tony Rezko.

She wrote:

Michelle conveys the appealing idea that she will tell her husband when he’s puffed up or out of line. She aims high — she ordered her husband to stop puffing on cigarettes as he started campaigning. But then, why didn’t she see the red flags on the Rezko deal?

Without question, Dowd thought Michelle was falling short. This woman behind the what was supposed to be a great man wasn't fulfilling her role to Dowd's satisfaction.

Clearly, Dowd holds Michelle in higher regard now than she did then. In her column today, Dowd chastises Republicans, McCain supporters, and miscellaneous Obama enemies for preparing to mince up Michelle now that Hillary is no longer here to kick around anymore.

Dowd writes:

It’s good news for Obama that Hillary’s out of the race. But it’s also bad news. Now Republicans can turn their full attention to demonizing Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama is the new, unwilling contestant in Round Two of the sulfurous national game of “Kill the witch.”

It's kind of funny that Dowd herself was one of the first players in the national game of "Kill the witch," Michelle Obama version.

There are some who think it will be harder for America to accept a black first lady — the national hostess who serenely presides over the White House Christmas festivities and the Easter egg roll — than a black president.

Who are the "some" Dowd says will have trouble accepting a black first lady?

Who is Dowd calling racist?

This "some" stuff is cowardly. Be specific. It's wrong to slam the "some" without identifying them.

There are creepy Web sites, like TheObamaFile.com, dedicated to painting Michelle as a female version of Jeremiah Wright, an angry black woman, the disgruntled, lecturing “Mrs. Grievance” depicted on the cover of National Review.

On that site and others around the Internet, the seamy rumors still slither that there’s a tape of Michelle denouncing “whitey,” a rumor that Barack Obama disdained last week as “scurrilous.”

The Internet is loaded with creepy websites because it's loaded with creeps. It's not as if poor Michelle is being targeted.

In terms of seamy rumors, Dowd need look no further than her own New York Times when it comes to stirring up sleaze and lies. Does the John McCain - Vicki Iseman affair sound familiar?

...In their narrative of how Hillary lost in The Times on Sunday, Jim Rutenberg and Peter Baker said that Mark Penn argued that Hillary should subtly stress Obama’s “lack of American roots.”

That’s a good preview of how Republicans will attack Michelle, suggesting that she does not share American values, mining a subtext of race.

Oh, for God's sake.

Lib queen Dowd is the one hung up on race. She seems to forget that Republicans played up John Kerry and wife Teresa Heinz as rich and privileged, and out of touch with average Americans and their values. (Note to Dowd: The Kerrys are out of touch with average Americans. They're also white.)

The divisiveness of the elitist Obamas is of their making. It's disingenuous for Dowd to suggest that Republicans will be "mining a subtext of race" when she's the one whipping out the race card.

The Republicans don't need to focus on a subtext of race when they can stick with mining the Obamas' in-your-face liberalism and socialism.

...Team Obama is hoping for the best. When she’s on her game, after all, Michelle is a knockout. And as one Obama booster enthuses: “Michelle’s story is a lot more mainstream American than Cindy McCain inheriting a brewery.”

Michelle the knockout is very different from the Michelle that Dowd described in 2007.

But the campaign is preparing for the worst, planning to shore up Michelle with her own slick and quick war room staffed by top operatives from previous campaigns.

David Axelrod thinks “there’s a real recoil potential” if the Republicans go after Michelle. “I don’t think she’s projecting herself into the fray in a way that would justify that,” he said, adding that her charming and polite daughters, Malia and Sasha, are walking testimony to Michelle’s “loving parenting.”

So Malia and Sasha will serve as human shields to protect Michelle?

Way to exploit the kids!

Michelle doesn't campaign for her husband by standing by her man, with a "fixed, adoring gaze" locked on him. She chooses to get in the fray. She speaks out.

Of course, Republicans should respond to her remarks. If she can't stand the heat, she should get out of the kitchen. Or, maybe she should get in the kitchen and bake cookies.

The fact is the potential for recoil will come from Americans recoiling at Michelle's statements, not any legitimate reaction to whatever she might say on the campaign trail.

If Michelle comes under fire from Republicans it will be because of what she says, not because she's black, not because she's a woman, and not because Republicans are ruthless.

Isn't it weird that Dowd, once so critical of Michelle, is now whining about what the evil Republicans are scheming to do to her?

Very weird.