You can’t possibly say it’s been a bad week when Ted Cruz has a problem with a soft-core porn actress.
The run-up to this weekend’s Republican debate was greatly enlivened by the news that Amy Lindsay, an alum of “Animal Lust” and “Whose Thong Is It Anyway?,” was starring in a Cruz campaign ad. It was supposed to show a therapy group for ex-Marco Rubio supporters, and Lindsay had a major role as the woman who said, “Maybe you should vote for more than just a pretty face.” It was pulled after reporters checked into her résumé.
“It’s part of a bigger problem that Ted has,” Rubio told MSNBC when the story came up on Friday. Unfortunately, he said he was referring to Cruz’s effort to “act like the only consistent conservative in this race.” But I believe I speak for many Americans when I say this needs to be revisited during the debate.
We’re down to six debaters — are you going to miss Rand or Carly? Maybe we ought to give them an official farewell. On “Survivor,” the last few contestants on the island used to take a walk down a long trail studded with the pictures of Those Who Went Before, so they could reminisce about what a great guy Frank was before he got tossed out for failing to eat the beetle larvae.
This could work very well for the Republicans. The surviving six could walk around the auditorium, looking at photos of their former comrades who have gone into suspended candidacy. (“Ah, Bobby. Remember when he failed to gain traction?”)
Or they could bring back one of the ousted contenders for a second chance. By audience vote! I’m pretty sure New Jerseyites would flood the lines if they thought they could return Chris Christie.
When the official action begins, Marco Rubio will be careful to avoid repeating himself. But maybe we could have a little chime that rings every time he mentions that his parents were hard-working immigrants.
Then everybody can turn on Ted Cruz and ask him whether he personally interviewed Amy Lindsay for her role.
Actually, when it comes to problems with actors in political ads, the Lindsay episode seems pretty minor compared with, say, the Trump campaign’s depiction of illegal Mexican immigrants with a film clip of Africans racing across the Moroccan border. But Cruz is very sensitive about anything that smacks of immorality. Just this week, his wife told a radio program that through his campaign her husband was showing “the face of the God that we serve.”
Almost everyone has relatives out campaigning for them. Jeb (“I am my own man”) Bush has been surrounding himself with so much family you’d think he was a von Trapp. He had his 90-year-old mother trudging through the New Hampshire snow with her walker. Now George W. is riding to his defense in South Carolina, the state that helped save W.’s own presidential prospects in 2000. I remember that primary. When you asked voters why they favored Bush over John McCain, they usually said something like, “If he gets in trouble, he can ask his dad what to do.”
If Jeb gets in trouble, do you think he’ll ask his brother? Does that make anybody feel more secure?
Even among the relatives who have not destabilized the entire Middle East with a ruinous war, there’s always the possibility of embarrassment. For instance, Donald Trump’s son Eric recently defended his father’s enthusiasm for waterboarding by saying it “frankly is no different than what happens on college campuses in frat houses every day.”
(Trump clashed with Cruz during the last debate after Cruz said he wouldn’t put waterboarding into “widespread use.” That was the comment that triggered Trump’s famous remark about his opponent’s manhood, which marked the only time in the campaign that Ted Cruz was a totally sympathetic figure.)
The level of rancor is pretty stupendous. Perhaps that’s because South Carolina politics are … unusual. This is the place that gave us Mark Sanford of “Appalachian Trail” fame and Joe Wilson, the representative who yelled “You lie!” while President Obama was speaking to Congress. And, of course, the 2012 South Carolina presidential primary winner Newt Gingrich.
Meanwhile, Cruz is running ads to remind viewers that Trump once tried to force an elderly widow to sell her Atlantic City house so he could use the space as a parking lot for limousines. (“A pattern of sleaze stretching back decades.”) One ad has a bunch of small children laughing about “eminent domain,” which is not something you hear all the time.
On the plus side, it might provide the opportunity for someone to recall that the widow in question once referred to the man who is now the leading Republican presidential candidate as “a maggot, a cockroach and a crumb.”
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