admittedly...I don’t know much about Perry. why do you say he’s a rino?
In that he is not really a conservative, but an "economic conservative" (RiNO) who is fully engaged with and mortgaged to big-bucks political supporters in Texas who have an Open Borders agenda because their business models rely on keeping wages dirt-cheap, flooding the labor market with rivers of illegal-immigrant labor.
This kind of capitalism is crony-capitalist because of a) the relationship between individual pols and their backers (money dictates the laws) and b) the use the backers make of government to plump up their annual results (busting wages, reducing their taxes, shutting out competition, etc.).
The track record of these big-business backers shows up in Texas state politics. Their agenda gets transacted, but the social-conservative agenda gets stiffed, and Perry and his lieutenant-governor cooperate with the RiNO speaker of the Texas house in making sure conservative legislation dies. They recently redistricted Texas's state reps, and the plan calls for pairing off the eight most conservative Republicans against one another and guarantees the Democrats will gain seats in the next election.
Rick Perry, despite the huge social and law-enforcement, education, and health problems created by crowds of illegal immigrants in jails, schools, and hospital ER waiting rooms, is solid in his Open Borders record, and his recent politicking to the contrary is a Potemkin-village false front designed to fool conservative voters.
This FR thread examined the recent debate and the debaters' performances and positions. The original poster has a noted (and commented-on) bias in favor of Ron Paul but is generally fair overall:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2777825/posts
Perry's Democrat-friendly, culture-hostile record on immigration, going back as far as 2001 and some things he said then, is explored in this FR thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2778074/posts
and also here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2777469/posts
Hope that gives you a good start on framing your picture of the issues that surround Rick Perry's primary candidacy.
lentulusgracchus calls anyone who isn’t his candidate a “rino.”