I am so against illegal immigration that this stance rules Perry out for me.
Who would you vote for, Perry or Obama?
That is fine for the primaries - you should support the person that is closest to your views. But what will you do if he is the nominee? Will you support him against Obama, or will you stay home because your preferred candidate was not nominated.
And I wish people would stop saying candidates are "not true conservatives" because you disagree with some of their positions. Also be careful of the term RINO - if yuo look at what a lot of elected Republicans actually stand for, they are not very conservative, so Republican is not synonymous with conservative. In some cases, "RINO" might be a GOOD thing, if they are actually more conservative than your average Republican...
A wise and growing choice among Tea Party conservative tax payers it would seem. It has been shown that uncontrolled illegal immigration can be traced back to many of Americas economic and social woes. Close the borders and cut off the welfare gravy train to the illegal immigrant community, now!!
Perry continued to lie about how he was going to cuty property taxes after a very good and real conservative tax assessor in Houston told him his numbers were way off. I cannot stand lying politicians. If I can’t find one who doesn’t tell the truth ALL the time, I’ll write one in. It’s my choice.
I understand where you're coming from, but consider the voter demographics in Texas. Perry would have had a hard time getting elected in a state with a 37.6% Hispanic population compared to 16.3% Hispanic nationally (both figures from the 2010 census). The Texas counties that border the Rio Grande and our big cities with large Hispanic populations typically vote Democrat.
Hispanics do suffer from the same sort of racial and cultural bias as blacks, but not quite as bad. When a Hispanic man ran for Texas Senator he got about 85% of the Hispanic votes in Houston compared to about 95% of Houston blacks. A Cuban Republican with a Hispanic name ran for mayor of Houston against a white Democrat man and a black Democrat man and got about 45% of the Houston Hispanic vote.
When Perry ran for governor in 2002 he got less than 20% of the Houston Hispanic vote. I don't remember what his position on illegal immigration was back then. The Houston Chronicle reported that 39% of Hispanics voted for Perry for governor in 2010. While that is still a large Democrat advantage, consider what such a percentage would mean if it could be translated nationwide to the 2012 election. It would be a great blow to Democrats to have so many of one of their core constituencies voting Republican. I think Bush got about 40% of the Hispanic vote in his two presidential election squeakers.
Perhaps the Hispanic vote will not be so important in the 2012 election given Obama's large negatives. But if it came down to Perry vs Obama, I would vote for Perry in a minute despite problems I have with some of the things he has supported.
yeah, he is weak on illegal immigration.