Texas governor Rick Perry is said to be very possibly preparing to announce his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination for president of the United States.

Perry could well become the front runner if he enters the race. And he easily could beat Obama for many reasons, the first of which is that he still is a popular sitting governor – one of the longest-serving in American history – who is in his third term as the leader of a very large state. Perry became governor way back in 2000. That is quite a record.  But since he is a conservative, the media have generally blacked out his achievements.

Compare Perry to some of the others in the GOP field and he seems much stronger. Mitt Romney left the Massachusetts governorship after one single term in 2006 to run for president. Romney gave Massachusetts a state health-care plan like ObamaCare and homosexual marriage, was pro-abortion (he’s flipped now and is pro-life) and believes now that man is causing ‘global warming’. In addition Romney is a Mormon, which most mainstream Christians consider to be a strange cult.

Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty is very smart but not all that charismatic or well known. Conservative Rick Santorum was trounced for re-election to a third term for his US Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2006. Texas congressman Ron Paul is a kook who said we should sell all the gold in Fort Knox. Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachmann is a great candidate but little known to the general public.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich harmed himself among his own base, perhaps fatally, by savagely criticizing fellow Republican congressman Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan. And Rudy Giuliani, who may enter the race, certainly ‘saved’ New York City as mayor for eight years (1994-2002) but that was long ago. And Giuliani is socially very liberal  – he is in his third marriage – which will not appeal to conservative Republican primary voters.

Even still, any of them would make a better president than Obama…

Rick Perry, however, is a more appealing candidate than any of them. In every way. Today. Right now. He is an effective, long-serving sitting governor who is very popular among Texans, and is the ‘big state’ candidate that Americans can gravitate to in both the primaries and the general election. Even Ronald Reagan had been out of the California governor’s mansion for almost six years by the time he was elected president in 1980. Yet Reagan still was elected easily and was one of the most effective presidents in American history.

Thus Perry is politically “hot”. And he is a strong leader of a state with the best economic record in America today, suffering less in the current recession than any other. His entire wikipedia page is here  It is very interesting reading.

There are certainly some controversies about Perry, but generally for conservatives and for most independents today, he is very likable. He even was an Eagle Scout as a youth. Compare that to Obama studying Islam in Indonesia in his boyhood.

Perry indeed may be the Big Fish whom Republicans have been waiting for, who can win the nomination, take on Obama and win the White House handily. Like Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in November 1980 in a landslide even though Reagan was reviled by the media for more than a decade and dismissed by the left even six months before the election.  And that victory too was based largely on the economy, which is going to be the major factor in 2012 as well.

Perry also has not been in the national spotlight as Reagan was for many years, and so the Media Left have not had a chance to tear him down as they tore down Ronald Reagan. They called Reagan a dumb actor and radical conservative from the minute he became California governor in 1966. So Perry is way ahead of even Reagan. He has no existing national media character assassination to peel back, although it will come if he is the nominee.

And Perry is not like activist Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who only has been in office for 18 months, but whom the national GOP has been begging to run for president because he has been so tough in solving New Jersey’s economic woes very quickly. Christie wisely is declining.

Then consider Obama, who only was elected to the US Senate in 2004, yet by 2007 was running for president. And look at what we got… Total incompetence.

Indeed Perry has as much experience or more than most candidates who ever have run for the presidency. He is a governor with managerial experience and a record of political accountability, which is a huge plus. And Americans are looking for a manly, commanding candidate to take control of our nation at this troubled time, and one thing is for sure – Rick Perry is all man.

He is a handsome leader who will appeal to women voters on that count alone, and has an unblemished record as a winner and a fighter. And although he earlier had said that he was not interested in the presidency, he recently told Neil Cavuto on Fox News that his wife and supporters had asked him “to give this a second thought” and that “our country is in trouble.”

So if he runs, he will be acting out of a sense of patriotism, not ego. And that is a very positive sign and an added bonus.

James Richard “Rick” Perry was born in 1950 in Paint Creek, Texas to a ranching family. For many years, Perry was a Democrat like his father. He supported Democrat presidential candidates including Al Gore in 1988, and served in the Texas legislature as a Democrat from 1984 until he switched to the Republican party in 1989. He was elected Texas agricultural commissioner in 1990.

He was elected lieutenant governor of Texas in 1998 and assumed the Texas governorship when former governor George W. Bush was elected president in 2000. Perry then was elected to full gubernatorial terms in 2002, 2006 and 2010. He served in 2008 as the chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Perry is a fiscal and social conservative. He opposes codification of gay rights and homosexual marriage. He has turned down federal money for unemployment insurance because of the federal strings that were attached to it. He favors the death penalty and tort reform, which has lowered health insurance and health-care costs in Texas. He believes that the concept of “intelligent design” – that a God-like force is behind the design of the world – should be taught alongside the theory of evolution.

Perry is not without national controversy, however. He once said:  “Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that… My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.” The Media Left have criticized him for that comment.

In 2001 he proposed the Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive 8-lane super-super-highway that would cross Texas north-south and east-west like a plus sign (+). Many conservatives feared that such a plan was a “land grab” and a way to further erase the border between Mexico and the US. The highway has never been built.

In 2007, wikipedia reports that he signed an executive order mandating that all Texas teenage girls  receive a vaccine against a sexually-transmitted disease called HPV, with a parent opt-out, of course. There are other controversies about his ties to Texas businesses, which the media will jump on if he joins the presidential race.

But all in all, if Rick Perry enters the 2012 presidential race, he will immediately become a force, and very likely the nominee. He easily can beat Obama. And he has hardly even begun giving speeches nationally, except for his June 18 speech  to the Republican Leadership Conference, which was utterly authoritative and enthusiastically received by the party. Meanwhile the current front-runner Mitt Romney has been giving speeches for years and sometimes seems dated. At the same time, Obama is the most overexposed president in history.

With a newly energized Republican field talking more confrontationally about the failing economy, Perry indeed could build a constituency quickly and become America‘s next president in November 2012. Watch this man. He truly is a heavyweight.

Please visit my website at www.nikitas3.com for more. You can read excerpts from my book, Right Is Right, which explains why only conservatism can maintain our freedom and prosperity.