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I'm missing Armey, Gramm and Newt real bad these days. But not 41.

I know what you mean, and I'd love to see Newt back in it as the Polemicist-in-Chief of the GOP (they need someone like that to articulate the positions people like Dennis Hastert and Jennifer Dunn are always putting together), a role which has fallen by default to Tom DeLay (I love to watch the Chron poofitorialists foam at the mouth over him: it's like watching cats trying to sharpen their claws on marble). But DeLay is in a leadership role that crimps his polemic and vice versa, so they need a duty back-bencher to throw grenades at the swollen heads and ideologues on the Left.

As for Texas politics, I suggest X41 mainly because of the dearth of name-recognition among Texas Pubbies: Gov. Rick, DeLay, KBH, and Carole K-R-S are about the only widely-recognized Pubbies. X41 would probably vote about the same way KBH does now, and would prevent the 'Rats from sneaking someone in there, and he'd be tough for the Senatorial 'Rats to take on. How do you argue policy and beef about intelligence-gathering with a former President and DCI? How do you cover up Clinton's Chinese shenanigans when the guy on point for the Pubbies is a former POTUS and ambassador to China? If he'd go along, and if the Pubbie leadership could figure out how to employ him properly, X41 could screw Dasschole and der U-Boot Kapitaen pretty badly when they try on X41's favorite president in foreign and defense policy.

And as I said before, I still like the idea of John Cornyn remaining in the shade.

The problem is more fundamental and simple:

Right now ... Our best conservatives are not good leaders,
our best leaders are not good conservatives.

With the loss of Armey, our Texas avg Congress-critter IQ dropped by half. Now, we have DeLay in leadership; Pete Sessions is very good too. Up and comer. But we have a problem with forthright Conservative leaders.

My favorite in state govt right now is Dewhurst, but frankly Craddick must be doing soemthing right too to totally PO the liberals and the media.

I frankly see X41 as even worse politically than Cornyn,
if you go look at their overall records. Cornyn tends to
be good on some judicial issues, he at least was defending public religious expression as consistent with the 1st amendment. X41 remember gave us Rudman's Souter! Cornyn voted to cut taxes, X41 raised taxes. We have TONS of better conservatives to choose from ... WHY NOT SENATOR RON PAUL?

"I suggest X41 mainly because of the dearth of name-recognition among Texas Pubbies ..." Sadly, you prove the point of EternalVigilance, that we need 'name recognition' to go by. That is an AWFUL way to select the best person for the job. We end up self-selecting only from the same shallow gene pool of long-time pols, who are the most flea-infested lobbyist-back-scratchers that manage to give them lots of money for 'media' campaigns that misinform rather than inform the voters.

You need to cast the net wide and then find who are the BEST conservatives and the BEST leaders. Dont you realize that we have 180 elected officials in Austin? Find the top 30 conservatives. Of those, find the top 9 leaders, ie, the best 5% among the elected leaders who are both good Conservatives and COMPETENT LEADERS WHO CAN ADVANCE THE CONSERVATIVE AGENDA ... and promote THEM.

You will have 9 names that IMHO will be better than KBH, Perry, CCRS, or X41 for whatever post you are envisioning.