Hey, we've all been there. You need some extra cash on hand—maybe $50 for groceries, or a couple thousand for your leaky roof, or maybe a million bucks to run for Senate against a far more popular candidate. Under those circumstances, it's easy to understand how some chump change might slip your mind.

So now we know, thanks to New York Times investigators, that Ted Cruz got a huge loan from a huge bank where his wife works, and then gave that money to his campaign. And we know he didn't report the loan like he should have. And on top of that, we know that he told a by-our-bootstraps story about how he and his wife spent their own savings so he could run for office.

The question is: Does anybody care?

The Cruz campaign is hoping the answer is no. They're trying to dismiss the disclosure failure as a casual mistake—lumping it in with what they're calling "CruzCrimes," on par with throwing away batteries and crossing on a yellow light, despite neither of those things involving a million dollars and breaking the rules of the Federal Election Commission.

"It's a matter of semantics," said Cruz campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier.

"It is an inadvertent filing question," said Cruz.

Yeah, sure, the paperwork didn't go through, that's the ticket. That still doesn't explain why, for years, he's been telling a story about liquidating his assets. And in fact, he's STILL trying to get away with that story: "Heidi and I, when we ran for Senate, we made decision to put our liquid net worth into the campaign," he told CNN.

I'm hoping Cruz tries to use that line in the debate tonight, so Trump can explode at him. Trump's been on a feeding frenzy with Cruz lately, going after him with this birther nonsense that Cruz isn't eligible to run for president.

But what's really nuts is that the birther claim, which is not an issue to anyone but the fringiest of conspiracy theorists (and one constitutional law professor), actually seems to be landing with Republican voters. Apparently 15 percent of voters are "bothered" by Cruz's place of birth. Good grief. Trump has risen one point over the last month, Cruz has dropped by six.

And now the other GOP candidates are starting to parrot Trump's attack. I don't know how we got to this state of affairs, where some of the top figures in the party are clamoring to repeat what Donald Trump just said, but here we are: Huckabee said he has "a little concern" about Cruz's eligibility; Santorum says it's "not settled law." Of course, neither of those candidates is getting anywhere near the White House.

But that still doesn't mean Trump has the Iowa caucuses all sewn up. Depending on how you look at the statistics, Trump and Cruz are neck-and-neck (if you believe traditional polls are a good indicator of victory) or Cruz is pulling way ahead of Trump (if you believe politics has suddenly changed and polling doesn't mean as much as it once did).

So, that's good news for Cruz, unless this loan "scandal" (which is really more of a minor kerfuffle as far as voters seem to be concerned) starts getting more toxic. And that could certainly happen! That's because, as Charles Pierce points out, Cruz has made a career out of alienating everyone around him. All humans who meet Ted Cruz grow to loathe him. Maybe voters are just looking for an excuse to vote for someone else.