On Friday on the campaign trail in Iowa, Ted Cruz told a story to his followers about how he and his wife Heidi discipline their younger daughter, Catherine, if she were to tell a lie.

The Senator told the crowd that would spank her. He added that voters should figuratively “spank” Hillary Clinton over her Benghazi lies. The audience laughed.

.@tedcruz: Voters should spank Hillary Clinton like I spank my five-year old daughter. #IACaucus pic.twitter.com/FTdmrP4mTv

— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) January 9, 2016

These are conservative Midwesterners. As a born-and-bred Midwesterner from a conservative home, I will say that being on the receiving end of the occasional swat as a child was not unfamiliar, and our now-grown children would receive the occasional hand-meets-butt contact when their behavior was particularly egregious.

But this is Ted Cruz. And the media and liberals exploded all over themselves.

Outspoken liberal actor Wil Wheaton — whose noted body of work escapes me — tweeted this:

Ted Cruz: "I hit my child. Hitting children is GREAT! I'm not a shitfuck at all. Vote for me!"

— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) January 9, 2016

Right. Because name-calling makes such an effective, thoughtful argument.

Matthew Dowd, formerly a Bush strategist and now an ABC commentator, declared that Cruz was “not a real man” and compared him to NFL player Adrian Peterson, who was suspended for abusing his son.

Cruz: "I hit my 5 year old daughter, and i am going to make a joke about it." unreal. that isn't a real man.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 9, 2016

All the folks in Twitter defending hitting a 5 year old also probably think Adrian Peterson is a great guy.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 9, 2016

And at the Washington Post, writer Philip Bump penned an article entitled, “Ted Cruz Spanks His Daughter, and Republicans are A-OK With That.” Well, you know it’s those Republicans — the knuckle-dragging yahoos who live in flyover states like Iowa, or Nebraska, or my own adopted state of Kansas. And to make his point he included charts — charts! — to show how the majority of “white” Republicans support spanking, unlike the enlightened white Democrats in New England.

But wait, isn’t this the Washington Post? The same Washington Post who published — and later retracted — this cartoon depicting Ted Cruz’s daughters as trained monkeys?

I see. It’s okay to ridicule a young child in a nationally-read publication. It’s not okay for that same child’s father to discipline that child in the way he sees fit.

Especially if he’s a conservative Republican like Ted Cruz.