[muawiyah]

Ronaldus Magnus never ran for public office as a Democrat.

Rick Perry ran for office and won several times as a professional Democrat politician.

We really don't need RINOs anymore.

[Neu Pragmatist]

Nice try, won’t fly ... A Conservative Democrat in Conservative Texas that had long been dominated by Conservative Democrat politics ...

[Arec Barrwin]

Other Democrats who changed to Republican:

Phil Gramm
John Connally
Ronald Reagan
James Baker
Sonny Perdue
Condoleeza Rice
Jesse Helms
Michelle Bachmann

If you’re calling Perry a RINO for changing party affiliation, you’re calling all of the above RINOs. Go back to DU.

[txrangerette]

Having been a Democrat in Texas does not equal being a RINO.

Just because Reagan did not run for office when he was a young man, like Perry did when he was a young man and a Texas Democrat, does not mean anything against Rick Perry.

When I was young it was almost unheard of to run in TX as anything but a Democrat. What precious few Republicans there were did not come from Perry’s area. They came from North Central Texas or around Houston and were from suburbia. The hinterlands were solid, solid Democrat because that was their tradition. Republicans were associated with Reconstruction after the Civil War and with Herbert Hoover.

That is just the truth. You want to rewrite history. The history Rick Perry lived and the geography of his upbringing makes his unfolding political story make perfect sense.

There is Phil Gramm who helped Reagan pass his bills while still a Democrat, then he became a Republican. He represented rural TX.

There is Ralph Hall who for many, many years served as a Democrat Congressman from TX, who had the single most conservative voting record in Congress of 100 percent, year after year after year. When the Dems became so radicalized in DC, Ralph Hall finally switched to Republican when an elderly man with snow white hair. He still serves today way into his 80s. He voted against the debt ceiling bill.

You are pretty sharp most of the time, but on this you are not into reality on the topic. Your head is above the clouds and not down on ground level where these people actually lived and still do.