President Rick Perry? Texas GOP Doesn’t Think So

With the 2012 GOP presidential field wide open, it’s only natural that the eyes of some Republican strategists would turn to the popular governor of a state that has already produced three modern presidents. But don’t hold your breath for a President Rick Perry.

Following more than two dozen interviews conducted at this weekend’s Texas state Republican convention, the Austin American-Statesman reports that the idea of a Perry presidential run strikes even his supporters as a combination of bizarre, undesirable and unlikely. Although Perry trounced Kay Bailey Hutchison in the March primary, and even though Perry has gone out of his way to build up his national profile since the election of Barack Obama, the paper reports that the local groundswell for a Perry run is practically nil — “largely a fascination of political operatives and reporters in Austin.”

When asked if she would support Perry in 2012, one Dallas homemaker said, “I love Rick Perry [but] I don’t know if I would go quite that far.”

Said another: “I would support him. … The problem is that he’s from Texas, and we’ve had Lyndon and George and George W.”