If you liked George Bush, you will love Rick Perry.  

Every day we in Texas hear disbelieving conservative citizens on local talk radio asking "...is the national media serious about Rick Perry as a conservative president?" 

Because here in Texas, we know Rick Perry is anything but a conservative. 

As the moderates realize the country wants a conservative president, they want to find us one.  Romney was fine until ObamaCare was modeled on his RomneyCare.  Kind of looks fatal to the moderates.  So, who's next?

How about Perry?  Hey, he is a conservative -- the moderate's kind of conservative.  Does that Bible thing, talks secession.  Let's go! 

Perry, as was Bush before him and Romney is today, is a slick, chameleon politician who changes his colors for the times.  Rick Perry is a former Democrat, Al Gore's state chairman in 1988, a big government type who used an executive order to try to force Texas children entering 6^th grade to be injected with Gardasil, a drug to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.  Mandated -- sound conservative to you?

So you think government is getting intrusive?  Think ObamaCare is forcing you to choose one kind of healthcare?  So just how does it feel to have your 11-year-old daughter tell you she has to be treated with Gardasil to protect her against STDs? 

That's Rick Perry, folks.  And fortunately both houses of the Texas Legislature overruled him after he signed the executive order demanding such a fatuous action.  Sound like a small-government conservative to you?

Any concerns on illegal immigration?  Maybe you feel open borders are a problem?  Well, Rick Perry has quite an answer for you.  His signature legislation was the Trans-Texas Corridor, where Texas would use its eminent domain to take a mile-wide swath of land from the Texas border to the Oklahoma border and turn it over to a Spanish company for a highway, rail corridor.  And, anyone from Mexico could travel into Texas, with no customs check until they hit Kansas. 

If you like open borders, you will love Rick Perry.

And the Arizona immigration law passed last year?  "It's not for Texas," says Perry. 

Perhaps you do not understand hate crime legislation is an underhanded way to control free speech.  Rick Perry is your guy.  He not only signed the Texas hate crime legislation, he made a very big deal about why it was needed.

The Rick Perry interest today is instructive in how gullible non-conservatives are for anyone who seems, well, conservative.  These moderates hate conservatives -- see how they attack Sarah Palin even when she is not a candidate.  Yet they pant ravenously about a new, clean, successful "conservative" like Perry, who is anything but a conservative, to lead them to the Promised Land. 

The Texas Governor's office is among the weakest in the country.  The Texas Governor does not do much -- so the massive success Texas has shown in job creation does not come from Rick Perry, but from the people here who live their lives and run their businesses, conservatively.  They elect a conservative legislature that passes conservative laws.  That conservative legislature overrules Rick Perry.

Moderates who are now championing the need for a "conservative" like Perry are the same ones who tell us Sarah Palin cannot win.  They tell us Michele Bachmann is a nutcase.  Palin and Bachmann cannot win because, well, they are really conservative -- out of the mainstream.  Doesn't make sense, does it?  

Perry is their kind of conservative, a moderate's conservative.

While we welcome Rick Perry to the conservative party, we know he is here because it is the best party in town.  And when it isn't, he will be a moderate again, with great hair, trying to open our borders and force our children to be inoculated against STDs, against their parents' will.

I hope that we will have a conservative legislature to reverse him.

[Editor's note: See also Why America Needs Governor Perry as its President]