I can think of a couple off the top of my head....Perry (a non-lawyer) made tort reform a priority. It wouldn't have gone anywhere otherwise.
Likewise Texas push-back against the EPA. (air-quality etc.) Only a governor has stubborn as Perry would stand up against the Feds like he has.
Then Texas sued and won a lawsuit against the Feds over strings attached to education money owed the state. Don't know if Perry should get credit for that or not but it certainly wouldn't have happened w/o his backing and maybe his initiation. The state democrats were all for the federal stings.
He also was adamant (rightly or wrongly) against Texas spending it's total rainy day fund in the budget shortfall this past legislative session insisting on cuts instead. Without his opposition, the entire fund would have been used.
One of his priorities now is holding college administrators feet to the fire over the cost of higher education. He thinks they are inefficient and professors are teaching too little among other things.
I'm sure others can add to this and I could too if I wanted to put in some research time. IMO he's been a pretty effective governor.
I am not going to be content this election with simply putting a guy in the White House with an (R) after his name. We need a federal government that will move the country in the right direction and advance the conservative cause.
Notice I said government and not president. Because it will not be enough to simply replace Obama with a Republican. We will need additional seats in Congress to increase the GOP majority (preferably to a super majority) and we will need to put the Senate back under GOP control. Only then can we truly move the country in the right direction again by repealing Obamacare, stopping Cap & Trade, reducing regulations that are strangling our industries, reducing the tax burden for individuals and corporations, reducing the size of government, putting conservatives back on the Supreme Court, adopting the "Arizona" approach to illegal immigration, and I can go on and on. None of this will happen however if we are just putting a placeholder in the White House who will have little or no coattails.
So all that said, is Rick Perry the man that is going to move the chains for us? The Democrat/Socialists have us backed up on our 4-yard line and it's 4th-and-goal for them. If we stop them only to go four and out ourselves, we are only going to give them the ball back in 4 years in great field position. Instead, we need to get the ball back and hand it to a leader who will start picking up 1st downs for us so that we can march back across the field ourselves.
Sorry for all the football references but that is the best way I can explain our situation. We cannot settle for beating Obama with a president who will be weak on offense. We need a real quarterback who will be able to put together a game winning drive despite being backed up in his own end zone.
So I ask again, is Rick Perry going to be that quarterback? I do not think so. Definitely not Mitt Romney and probably not any of the other current candidates besides maybe Herman Cain. Sarah Palin? Absolutely. She is the one that will energize the base, win us the Senate and perhaps a super majority in the House. If she was able to put someone like Herman Cain on her ticket, she would completely neutralize the Obama/Hillary ticket that I see coming down the road (yes, I see Obama dumping Biden for Hillary at next summer's convention).
If it's Obama/Hillary against a Perry/Santorum ticket, we might as well all move to Canada.