The narrative of an oily, underhanded campaign keeps building against Texas Republican Ted Cruz, culminating with Monday's apology by his national spokesman for posting an inaccurate story on Facebook based on a video that misquoted Marco Rubio supposedly dismissing the bible.

The spokesman, Rick Tyler, makes a convincing case that he did not "knowingly post a false story." But the damage was done.

Cruz asked for Tyler's resignation, just moments before the spokesman was scheduled to go live on MSNBC.

As for the offending video story: Check here for details on this long and tangled yarn.

Apart from Tyler's exit, this would likely remain the molehill that it seemed if it didn't come on top of the stories about the Cruz campaign suggesting falsely in Iowa that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race.

Cruz blamed it on CNN. But that wasn't what CNN reported.

Then came the doctored photo in South Carolina of Rubio shaking hands with President Barack Obama.

The campaign 'fessed up to that one, but not to a mysterious Facebook page that made it look like one of Rubio's most prominent South Carolina supporters, U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, had switched allegiances to Cruz.

That controversy got a lot of play in the run-up to the South Carolina primary, partly because Gowdy, the guy leading the House investigation into Benghazi, himself blamed it on Cruz.

Then there were a host of charges and counter-charges of misleading robo-calls. One of the most controversial was one authoritatively tied to a pro-Cruz Super PAC reminding Palmetto State voters that Donald Trump supported taking down the Confederate flag at the State Capitol.

Though true, it wasn't meant as a feather in his cap.

These stories aren't helping Cruz, and may in part explain why, despite his strong focus on Christian morality, he lost evangelical voters in South Carolina to Trump by a margin of 34-26 percent.

Not a good sign for Team Cruz in the South.