Perry is an embarrassment to the state.

Only to liberals, Steve.

The rest of us are feeling damn good about how pretty our state is sitting right now compared to the rest of nation.

He accepted the bailout dollars that were not tied to federally mandated future expansion of entitlement programs. He specifically chided the federal mandates that would levy future obligations on the citizens of our state. He was very clear and I don’t see a hint of hypocrisy.

Now, why shouldn’t he have accepted the strings-free bailout money, Steve? Texas is the third largest provider of federal income tax revenue. Perry realizes that those are his constituent’s dollars Washington is so casually spending, getting them back in the state is only prudent.

He’ll be taken seriously by conservatives on the national stage. He’s a rock rib solid Republican with a stellar track record of strong fiscal growth and spending restraint in our state. He’s pro-business, pro-family, Hispanic friendly and has no skeletons in the closet. Plus, he’s telegenic and gives one hell of a good speech. Oops, I almost forgot, he’s a fund raising monster; money won’t be an impediment in launching a nationwide campaign.

Far right conservatives will throw Palin under the bus once they get a good look at Perry. Fiscal conservatives will love him, social conservatives will think they’ve died and gone to heaven. The moderates can be won with a little massaging.

The only drawback he’s facing is the word Texas. I’d like to take a bullwhip to Bush’s compassionate hide every other Tuesday for the damage he inflicted on my state.

Can we just establish that you’re a liberal, Steven? I have no animus towards your mindset, but it would make the discussion much smoother.

I’m a conservative libertarian who realizes that I have a China man’s chance in hell of electing anybody who represents the classical liberal line of governance that established our country’s foundations. Until that day comes, I will vote GOP, as the only rational option to quasi-limited government.

Let me walk through your links ( I knew you would have them, the blind statists crutch);

#1 – We are number 49 in verbal SAT scores, according to your stats, because we have significant numbers of non English speaking students in our largest school districts. If you bother to check the schools by stats, we actually rank at or above average when you only consider anglo stats. Garbage in, garbage out. The stats are pliable depending on how and who you are tracking. We meet East Coast standards on all scholastic norms when you weed out the minorities. Their minorities score equally low, but they don’t have enough of them to skew the average downward. We do.

#2 High School graduation rates are another source of data management. Hispanics and blacks graduate at equally low rates across all state spectrums, we have more minorities than most and haven’t hidden the dropout rates as well as our nearest sister, California. Blame our weak teacher’s union. Once again, if you divide our graduation rates out by race, we compare favorably across the board. Hispanics and blacks seem to have a problem graduating their children. White people don’t. I chalk that up to social dynamics and IQ, something that can’t be parsed off to the school system to remedy.

#3 Are you fucking kidding me?

#4 Wrong. Try Louisiana.

#5 Wrong again. Try Mississippi.

#6 Oh my, wrong again. Try California.

If you hate this place so much, why don’t you move?

Did you bother to notice that we have the least unemployment, the six highest growth cities in the entire nation, a business climate that has laid off fewer people than any other state, a real estate market that has remained stable and an expanding workforce moving in from failing blue states?

This great state also manages to take the least from their citizen’s pockets while providing a high quality
of life. Rick Perry has done a fine job of managing our needs with a minimum of dollars.