I live in Tennessee and a lot of people here are excited about Perry getting into this race. They see him as a more formidable voice for conservative principles.
That's because Tennesseans are seeing a lot of MSM chum spread around. The RiNO's and MSM are pushing Perry hard now (three WSJ articles in just the last week, fainting over how wunnnnderful Perry is) .... He is not an authentic conservative.
Perry's an old Dem who switched parties but not priorities, and he's been wired in with a bunch of NWO types who've been pushing the boutique private-investment idea of privatizing public infrastructure for lush profits, for several years now. He's sponsoring toll roads near Austin and wants to sell off and toll a number of commuter routes into Austin.
Perry's man at Texas Dept. of Transportation (TexDoT), the late Rick Williamson, had the battle cry, "Toll roads or slow roads or NO roads!!"
Perry has also promoted the selling off of other publicly-built toll roads around the State of Texas, and he wants to sell off the Interstates to private parties as well.
Perry's also very big on using the notorious Kelo decision to seize private property for these toll-road projects, particularly for the NWO-sponsored SPP/NASCO "NAFTA Corridor" infrastructure project, which he was forced to downshift after a public outcry, but which has NOT gone away completely but is on the back burner, waiting to flare up again.
To compare Perry with Fred Thompson would be a good mental and political exercise; Perry's better, very solid, on right-to-life issues and is good on RKBA (I'm not sure where Fred is on 2A), but he has problems in a number of other areas to which conservatives are, and ought to be, sensitive.