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The problem is more fundamental and simple:

Right now ... Our best conservatives are not good leaders,
our best leaders are not good conservatives.

With the loss of Armey, our Texas avg Congress-critter IQ dropped by half. Now, we have DeLay in leadership; Pete Sessions is very good too. Up and comer. But we have a problem with forthright Conservative leaders.

My favorite in state govt right now is Dewhurst, but frankly Craddick must be doing soemthing right too to totally PO the liberals and the media.

I frankly see X41 as even worse politically than Cornyn,
if you go look at their overall records. Cornyn tends to
be good on some judicial issues, he at least was defending public religious expression as consistent with the 1st amendment. X41 remember gave us Rudman's Souter! Cornyn voted to cut taxes, X41 raised taxes. We have TONS of better conservatives to choose from ... WHY NOT SENATOR RON PAUL?

"I suggest X41 mainly because of the dearth of name-recognition among Texas Pubbies ..." Sadly, you prove the point of EternalVigilance, that we need 'name recognition' to go by. That is an AWFUL way to select the best person for the job. We end up self-selecting only from the same shallow gene pool of long-time pols, who are the most flea-infested lobbyist-back-scratchers that manage to give them lots of money for 'media' campaigns that misinform rather than inform the voters.

You need to cast the net wide and then find who are the BEST conservatives and the BEST leaders. Dont you realize that we have 180 elected officials in Austin? Find the top 30 conservatives. Of those, find the top 9 leaders, ie, the best 5% among the elected leaders who are both good Conservatives and COMPETENT LEADERS WHO CAN ADVANCE THE CONSERVATIVE AGENDA ... and promote THEM.

You will have 9 names that IMHO will be better than KBH, Perry, CCRS, or X41 for whatever post you are envisioning.

WHY NOT SENATOR RON PAUL?

As much as I like him, I do not think that the would stand a snowballs chance. The voters are so stupid they wouldn't understand what he was talking about and some would even be "derrrrrr Constitution?" My favorite statewides are Abbott and Patterson. I must say that as of now the bench for Texas Republicans is pretty shallow. Not many State Senators are worth a damn, and while there are some great State House members, they have so little name ID and grassroots base it makes it hard for them to make any substantial jump. There are some nice Congressmen but I don't really see any of them wanting to comeback to Austin as Governor.

My nightmare scenario is in 2006 we have Hutchison, Strayhorn, and Perry battle for the Gov mansion (I can't see Strayhorn playing second fiddle to anyone anymore and being Lite Gov) against Jim Turner on the Dem side. That would be such a fractured primary that Turner could slip on through and win. As we have seen on primary day, Republicans have no problem voting for liberals. Then on the Senate side we have an open seat. Dewhurst could run for it or maybe a sitting congressmen. Then the Dems will have a bunch of moderate white former Congressmen that are going to lose come November (Edwards would be tough) that could be a tough challenge to anyone that the R's put up. Unless they haven't learned their lesson, the Dems are not going to have another "Dream Team" ticket. Conservatives need to get prepared because 2006 could be the deciding factor on republicanism in Texas for decades to come.