From the Washington Post...

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Texas has no income tax, ranks 46th overall for the taxes it collects per capita and has the strongest job growth in the country. The state has accounted for between 30 percent and half of the net new jobs in the country in the past two years, depending on who is counting.

While Obama points to his universal health care law as a historic achievement, Texas is often cited as an example of the need for health-care reform: A quarter of Texans lack coverage, the highest share in the country.

While Obama seeks to increase federal funding for education, Texas ranks 47th in the country for the level of state spending on schools. And while the Obama administration clamps down on pollution, Texas ranks highest in the country for the levels of toxic chemicals released into the water and carcinogens released into the air, according to Scorecard, an organization that tracks nationwide pollution data.

The contrast with Obama — and GOP rival Mitt Romney — extends beyond policy, to Perry’s profile as a swashbuckling former Air Force pilot from Paint Creek in West Texas.

At 61, Perry is a gun enthusiast who carries a weapon when he goes jogging (and once shot a coyote on the trail). For 11 years, the longest tenure of any Texas governor, he has unapologetically presided over the most active death-penalty regime in the country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rick-perrys-entry-sets-up-a-clarifying-contrast/2011/08/10/gIQAum32AJ_story.html?hpid=z1

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But it is a credential Mr. Perry is unlikely to highlight that could make him the most formidable entrant in the Republican race so far: he is among the top political fund-raisers in the country, with a vast network of wealthy supporters eager to bankroll his presidential ambitions, and he has the potential to energize Republican donors who have shown only limited enthusiasm for the candidates already in the race.

In three campaigns for governor, Mr. Perry has raised $102 million, including more than $39 million during his successful 2010 bid for re-election. The Republican Governors Association, of which Mr. Perry is chairman, raised a record $22.1 million during the first half of this year.

And in recent months, even as the candidate himself was being coy about his presidential ambitions, Mr. Perry’s campaign finance operation has shifted into high gear, holding meetings with dozens of the party’s top uncommitted donors around the country, some of whom have already pledged to raise money for him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/us/politics/13donate.html?_r=1&hp

From Timothy Egan at the NYT

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In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.  Nearly all of Texas  is now in “extreme or exceptional” drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history.

Lakes have disappeared. Creeks are phantoms, the caked bottoms littered with rotting, dead fish.  Farmers cannot coax a kernel of grain from ground that looks like the skin of an aging elephant.

Is this Rick Perry’s fault, a slap to a man who doesn’t believe that humans can alter the earth’s climate —  God messin’ with Texas? No, of course not.  God is too busy with the upcoming Cowboys football season and solving the problems that Tony Romo has reading a blitz.

But Perry’s tendency to use prayer as public policy demonstrates, in the midst of a truly painful, wide-ranging and potentially catastrophic crisis in the nation’s second most-populous state, how he would govern if he became president.

“I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this,’” he said in a speech in May, explaining how some of the nation’s most serious problems could be solved.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/rick-perrys-unanswered-prayers/?hp

Let's get one thing straight from the start. Rick Perry is no blow-dry George Bush clone, even though he owes his stellar political career about 75 per cent to Bush and maybe 25 per to Osama bin Laden.

So what is the political profile of the Texas Governor, now officially in the race as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination? A Rasmussen poll this week has him on 29 points, as against his current rivals Mitt Romney on 18 and Michele Bachmann on 13.

Inside Texas he's the most successful politician in the history of the state. George Bush lost his first congressional race. In a lifetime career of 10 elections since 1984, Perry has never lost one.

He has an acute sense of political timing. His defeated opponents readily attest to Perry's relentless self-discipline as a campaigner, his skills at raising campaign cash - he already has a huge prospective war chest for his first national foray - and the fatal consequences of underestimating him.

He has a team of campaign advisors, notably Dave Carney, whose skills - ruthless in emergencies - have elicited admiration from professionals across the board.

Prior to Perry, the Texas governorship was a notoriously weak post, with decisive power wielded by the legislature, state comptroller and state commissioners. Perry has changed all that during his three stints as governor, with previously contentious posts now inhabited by his appointees.

But above all, Rick Perry is one lucky son of a bitch. Not just once or twice, but at almost every decisive fork in the road, Fate has given him a benign tap on the shoulder. Napoleon said "Give me lucky generals." Looking at Perry's CV, he'd have made him Grand Marshall of France on the spot.