ANYBODY BUT TRUMP: It doesn’t much matter that famous bank robber Willie Sutton denied ever saying, “Because that’s where the money is,” when asked why he robbed banks. History has a way of remembering things the way it likes. Good thing because that’s the only conceivable explanation why GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz is coming to Montecito next Saturday to hang out at the manse of Carl’s Jr. mogul Andrew Puzder.
For the record, Santa Barbara is not Cruz country. The fire-and-brimstone/you’re-all-going-to-hell politics espoused by Cruz are violently at odds with Santa Barbara’s squishier brand of Republicanism, far more concerned about capital gains taxes than who’s sleeping with whom. But these are dark days for Establishment Republicans like Puzder, such the quintessential Insider that his diatribes against raising the minimum wage appear in the Wall Street Journal with drumbeat regularity. This year Puzder has already made at least $332,000 in political campaign donations, writing checks to a host of failed presidential aspirants, including Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, and most recently Marco Rubio. With this paper trail, we can safely assume Puzder is part of the Anybody-but-Trump movement galvanizing the Establishment wing of the GOP. Clearly, he doesn’t believe Ohio Governor John Kasich — whose style and positions are most in sync with Santa Barbara — can derail the Donald. Hence the Cruz fundraiser.
With Trump stomping his way to decisive victory in this week’s New York primary, California primary voters — for the first time since 1976 — actually matter. Cruz didn’t merely lose New York; he was chased out, despite pledging the most unconditional support imaginable to the State of Israel. Cruz, a devout fundamentalist Christian, personifies the premillennial dispensationalist strand of Protestant thought that holds the Second Coming of Christ — a k a The Rapture — cannot occur unless the Jewish Temple that once existed on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is rebuilt.