Well, obviously a lot of texans like him because he is now serving a 3rd term.
You gotta be kidding, the MSM is giving him good press? He is being slammed relentlessly, haven’t you been reading those slams here at FR, they are being posted by Perry supporters as reasons to support him. Yesterday I watched Jack Cafferty, a typical lefty pressman, slam Perry (and Palin too) as stupid stupid stupid much to the guffaws of his fellow jourbalists. The left hates Rick Perry and that hate will likely rise to Palin level hate soon.
A review of his campaigns shows that it's not so much that they like him but that his opponents (both primary and general) were very dislike-able. Perry seems to be good at coming across as the lesser of evils.
With regards to the press, it's a classic two-man con. The lefty MSM goes all out on the hate which is intended to provoke the "oh well the lefties hate him so he must be good" reaction. It's a very predictable reaction and appears to me to be obvious emotional manipulation. Note that the facts of his record are not really what gets discussed in the resulting flame war - they get obscured. Flip the parties and it's how Obama won the Presidency without being vetted at all, even for the basic eligibility requirements.
We're all being played here. Perry or Obama it doesn't matter, the same guys ultimately own them both, and once again we the people will get a choice that is little different from the kind of vote that Soviet citizens got to cast - one where they could choose their flavor but not their destiny.
And most recently, followers of the popular anti-TSA groping bill in Texas (the Traveler Dignity Act), which gained nationwide attention, remember that, as Nalle put it, Perry “scuttled the bill.” Reports the RLC,
When Rep. David Simpson led the Texas legislature towards passage of an enormously popular bill ... to hold the TSA accountable for intrusive searches of airline passengers, Perry played a key role in making sure that the bill was not passed.
When the TSA and the Justice Department began pressuring him, although Perry had promised to submit the bill to the special legislative session, he delayed submitting the bill until it was so late in the session that it was virtually impossible to hold the constitutionally mandated votes necessary for passage. That way he could score points with the public for submitting the popular bill while at the same time making sure that it wouldn't pass.