The Cruz campaign is okay with lots of stuff that would fill a more conventional campaign with shame, from a pastor who said that God sent Hitler to kill the Jews to a different pastor who said that gay people should be put to death. In both instances, the Cruz campaign stood by their guys.
Team Cruz is not being cool at all about Amy Lindsay, though. Lindsay appeared in a recent Cruz ad, “Conservatives Anonymous,” about a support group for people who were duped by Marco Rubio. IRL she’s a Christian conservative who’s appeared in softcore porn movies including Carnal Wishes, Secrets of a Chambermaid, and Insatiable Desires.
Lindsay initially told BuzzFeed that the campaign knew about her filmography: “‘In a cool way, then hey, then it’s not just some old, white Christian bigot that people want to say, ‘It could be, maybe, a cool kind of open-minded woman like me,’ she said of people supporting Cruz.”
But after being called for comment on the BuzzFeed story, the Cruz campaign took down the ad and distanced itself from Lindsay.
As Ezra Klein recently wrote in a piece partially about Donald Trump’s shamelessness, “shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery.” In the controversy over the “Conservatives Anonymous” ad, we finally found out what fills Ted Cruz with shame: sex stuff.