In an interview with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul that aired on Sunday, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd noted that he has a tendency to get prickly with reporters. “This has been men and women, by the way,” Todd noted. That clarity was not apparent this past week when Democrats and reporters alike advanced the slanderous narrative that Paul reserved his testiness exclusively for women. This, they added, was an unattractive trait that might be rooted in a lack of respect for the female gender.

“He’s got to be careful here,” Todd told his colleague Andrea Mitchell. “This is turning into a habit, particularly over — this is now two prominent women interviewers…Kelly Evans of CNBC, Savannah [Guthrie] now. He seems to jump on it before — this is a tricky place for him to be. He needs to probably watch videotape of himself.”

Only when male the reporters who have also found themselves on the receiving end of Paul’s ire pushed back against the DNC-born narrative regarding Paul’s latent sexism did the political media stop repeating it. But that has not stopped some reporters from asking if Paul possessed the self-restraint that would be necessary if he becomes his party’s presidential nominee. In an interview with CNN, reporter Dana Bash asked if Paul had the ability to observe the standards of acceptable feminist decorum expected of Republicans by essentially treating women differently than they would treat men.

“Perception is reality sometimes in politics,” Bash said. “If you were the Republican nominee and you’re on the stage with Hillary Clinton, a female opponent, you going to have to pull your punches given the perception of you now?”

Paul replied with the eminently reasonable notion that he would treat a female opponent as he would treat a male opponent: Aggressively.

Mediaite has the video of this exchange.

“I would treat her with the same respect that I would treat a man, but I wouldn’t lay down and say ‘I’m not going to respond,’” Paul said. “That would be a sexist sort of response, to say, ‘Oh, my goodness, she deserves to be treated as aggressively because she’s only a woman.’ I would never say that about anybody. I don’t come into our interview thinking, ‘Okay, it’s a woman-versus-man interview.’ I think she has tough questions, he will ask tough questions, I have to be prepared.”

Nothing says “I’m here to shatter the glass ceiling for women” like “how dare you fail to treat me like the delicate flower that I am.” Apparently, however, this is how Clinton and her supporters are going to approach the 2016 campaign. To express frustration with a woman is to reveal sexist impulses that must be checked. Hillary Clinton is an accomplished figure in her own right; therefore she must be shielded from criticism and coddled. Only to the left, and apparently the political reporting establishment inside the Beltway, does this line of thinking make sense.