Says who?
You're right. He isn't a very attractive candidate. But given the demographic realities of the Brave New Texas and the existing slate of candidates, what are we to do? And make no mistake...those nasty demographic realities are only going to get worse...
And that is precisely Perry's weakness. He had every opportunity in the world to capitalize on this and get qualified conservative Hispanic Republicans into office.
So what did he do? He appoints a liberal Hispanic DEMOCRAT to the highest appointed office in the state, and now the same guy's trying to take out our only Hispanic Republican congressman!
When Bush was governor he used almost every appointment opportunity he had to get qualified conservative minorities into the GOP leadership. He put them on the benches and in his governor's appointments and it worked. One of them, Tony Garza, was Bush's SoS. He's Texas' Railroad Commissioner now and is a likely candidate to be the next ambassador to Mexico. Another Bush SoS, Alberto Gonzales, is now the White House Council and is likely going to be a future judge on the US circuit or possibly eve supreme court. And it got Bush 50% of the hispanic vote in 1998.
Perry's appointments are disasters in comparison. He's appointed one black conservative to statewide office, Wallace Jefferson, but that doesn't get any votes because the blacks will vote Libertarian before they'll vote Republican (if you doubt me look at the 2000 elections in texas - RR commissioner Michael Williams, a black republican, had only a libertarian challenger. The libertarian won in black precincts all over the state). His only major Hispanic appointment was a liberal pro-abort RINO who got booted out in the GOP primary by a conservative. Practically every other elected office that Perry gets to appoint, meaning the judicial benches that open up from mid-term retirements (and there have been dozens of them), has gone to crony attorneys from big city law firms. Many of them had never voted in a GOP primary in their lives before Perry appointed them, and almost all of them had never been GOP activists of any sort.
Hows about exporting illegal immigrants and putting the breaks on legal immigration until the great American melting pot is fixed?
I don't think I can vote for Perry and I don't think he's going to win. You're right ----some things are inevitable in Texas --like a state income tax and some big cultural changes.
Says who?