I'm a guy. Very heterosexual, happily married with one lovely daughter. Women such as Condi are rare. They can think in both linear terms, like men, and they can think in non-linear, relationship terms, like women. Condi knows the effect these little boot shots will have on her Main Enemy (psychological dislocation) and on her base male voters (extreme applause). She's at the point right now where she has to lay down markers and force Hillary to start doing stupid things like adjusting her hair.
One of the things Condi understands is armored warfare. One of the keyes to being a successful panzer skipper is to dislocate your opponent, not to destroy her. She wants to run against Hillary in 2008, that's what most folks don't realize. Hilly doesn't scare her. She relishes taking down a white girl.
Hillary struck too soon. Her affirmative vote for Condi was a shoddy bit of maskirovka that fooled no one. Boxer shouldn't have been the lead dog, because of her ralationship to Hillary. Hilly should have gotten a dimbulb like Mark Dayton to carry her water for her.
One last thing: more and more Pubbies are going to start saying that Condi looks awfully easy on the eyes and would make a great candidate in '08, especially when you look at our rather thin bench going into that year. It's the little visual things that will seperate her from the crowd. Watch as she makes speeches across the country (in Battleground States, of course) to civic groups about foreign policy in an age of Unrestricted Warfare. Which is what Karl Rove had her doing last year in a dry run during the 2004 campaign.
Nothing is done by accident by Condi Rice.
Be Seeing You,
Chris