I can only speak for myself but having been born and lived the majority of my life in Texas, I think this once again proves how ideological Texan Conservatives happen to be. Rick Perry is the epitome of a Texas Conservative, not too bright but not dumb looks "goodhair" on camera, and a staunch conservative who supports school vouchers, a deregulated market,pro-crime penalty, pro-gun, pro-death penalty and pro-christian politically dominated environment. As I said I can not speak for any Texan other than myself but my experience is that Texas is diverse politically, I think alot of the conservative young executive types simply follow their parents political prescriptions. Of course their are many that have don't fit that label especially among the minorities (hispanic/latino, African-American, Chinese, Japanese, Samoan etc). Austin definitely leans left for the most part for a number of reasons, chief among them is the overall young population, its high-tech/computer business hub and its cultural history. Houston is a port city dominated by ship-channel, energy, health-care etc. It is perhaps the most diverse large city in Texas. It has a china/korea town located on the west side, a GLBT community in the inner northwest corner of downtown, tons of mixed racial suburbs like Kingwood, Alief, Sugarland, Midtown, Bellaire etc. The city is hot and humid most of the year, is full of big-box stores but big enough to have plenty of boutique-type/small businesses. It has great food, horrible traffic, little efficient public transport, sports town, a couple of colleges, a great art scene lately leaning democratic like most big Texas cities. San Antonio reminds me of Houston in the 80's, growing suburbia(primarily on the north side although there is a lot of growth on southside (which has the toyota plant). growing medical center but is largely a city dominated by tourism and the military. The city is over 50% hispanic but leans both ways on a number of issues. I have never lived in Dallas or Ft.Worth for any long amount of time but have visited it frequently. I think the DFW area leans generally right but it has a very healthy art and musuem districts, great colleges, a LBGT district and mixed diverse cultural communities (this is just my opinions, I am sure there are many others who can improve upon my general descriptions). The upcoming Gov race is rather interesting with Perry (already the longest serving tex governor), Hutchison (formally Sen Kay-bay Hutchison), Kinky Friedman throwing their hats into the ring. It appears that Perry is going for the conservative (bush and hard conservative republicans) and Kay is trying to peel away the moderates who are tired of the Perry-Bush style state government. Kinky IMHO is a side-show who appeals to some libertarians and some on the left. At this point I would say the race is Perry's to lose barring some solid Dem candidate. However as a Texan I think the reality from afar makes Texas politics look as one of the most conservative corporatist states, with Tennessee seemingly following the same path (with its own lefty town in Nashville). I think Texas needs its citizens to open their eyes to the major failures of government under the tenure of Bush and Perry. Although Texas does come up good in its budget(which it is required to do under the state constitution) it has largely relied in federal assistance in both its military hubs, disaster relief (flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, drought). From my view our schooling has gotten worse in a number of ways including testing being their only focus for teachers and students, poor sex education with Texas ranking amongst the last in teen pregnancy. Personally I believe Texas schools could do with less bureaucracy/administration, we need lower teacher to student ratios, more dual-language speakers and a curriculum which addresses dual-language in our communities, and more support for teachers in terms of controlling their class rooms (parents have to a good job of preparing their kids for school and the schools need to have a relationship with its students guardians). I think over the last couple of decades some Texas-based large corporations have shown neither sound business ethics nor fiduciary with Enron and Arthur Anderson consulting having alot of sunshine upon them.

I am running out of steam, peace.