Don’t have a big opinion on Perry (Cain/Palin/Bachmann) are my faves, but let’s remember that Ronald Reagan was a democrat and Union President before he became a conservative.
No, he was always a conservative. He was a conservative when he was President of the Screen Actors Guild and he was a conservative as a Democrat. Back then there were more conservative Democrats than Republicans. As the Democrats became more and more liberal many conservatives switched parties. Since then Republicans have become even more conservative and the Democrats even more liberal.