Rick Perry this week roared away from the pack. Gallup had him the party favorite, with 29% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents saying they’re most likely to support him. Next came Mitt Romney with 17%, Ron Paul with 13%, and Michele Bachmann at 10%. All the rest were single digits except for “no preference,” which got 17%.

On top of that, Mr. Perry got the much-coveted Kinky Friedman vote. The political gadfly and musician, who in 2006 ran as an Independent against Mr. Perry, wrote in the Daily Beast that he didn’t always like the Texas governor. It had in fact been his plan to, upon death, be cremated and have the ashes thrown in Rick Perry’s hair. But now he sees Mr. Perry as “a good, kind-hearted man” with a solid economic record. Mr. Friedman admitted he’d vote for Charlie Sheen before Barack Obama, but asked: Could Perry fix the American economy? “Hell yes.”

Mr. Perry’s primary virtue for the Republican base is that he means it. He comes across as a natural conservative, Texas Division, who won’t be changing his mind about his basic premises any time soon. His professed views don’t seem to be an outfit he can put on and take off at will. In this of course he’s the anti-Romney. Unlike Ms. Bachmann, he has executive experience, three terms as governor of a state with 25 million people.

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Filed under: Featured, Inside The KC, Politics, Sonja Eddings Brown by Sonja Eddings Brown, Aug 27, 2011