Ron Paul Can't Handle the Heat in 'Hell's Kitchen'

COMMENTARY | Ron Paul is getting just a little bit irritated about questions over the racist articles in his newsletters published in the 1990s. He unplugged his microphone and walked out of a CNN interview when pressed on the subject, according to the L.A. Times.

When Newt Gingrich complained about negative advertising being directed against him by Mitt Romney, Romney repeated the often quoted statement by President Harry Truman about if one cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Then, according to Fox News, he suggested that President Obama was going to bring forth "Hell's Kitchen," referring to a show on the Fox Network where Chef Gordon Ramsey abuses cooking competitors.

If Ron Paul thinks that being asked about his newsletters is aggravating, he might want to think upon what Romney said. Obama and his people will drape Paul with a white sheet and make him like it in the unlikely event that he gets the Republican nomination. How Paul would react to such treatment, considering how he ran away from CNN, can only be imagined.

Indeed, his supporters, attracted by what they think is his stout defense of the Constitution, might want to consider how Paul seems to be unable to defend something that at the very least was done in his name. His protestations that he did not write the articles in question nor knew what they were do not pass the laugh test. Either he is being duplicitous or he is confessing to incompetence on an epic scale. His fleeing the room under questioning by CNN suggests that he knows he has not come up with a plausible story that saves whatever viability he has as a presidential candidate.

Then one can further imagine how a hypothetical President Paul might react to criticism and questioning. Will he flee a White House press conference if the questioning gets to annoying for him to handle? What will happen if the media starts writing and airing critical stories about him? Most presidents have found the media irritating, but most -- with the exception of Richard Nixon -- learned to live with it. Paul, however, evidently can't. That is another reason he should not be president.

Source: Ron Paul gets testy, walks out over talk of racist newsletters, Kim Geiger, L.A. Times, Dec 22, 2011

Romney: If Gingrich Can't Stand the Fire just Wait for "Obama Hell's Kitchen", Serafin Gomez, Fox News, Dec 21