Her rise was partly, if not largely, due to the fact that Perry isn’t a Conservative and he will always be vulnerable to a candidate to his right in a primary. Had Medina not turned out to be a 9/11 Truther nutter, she might very well have taken him down.
If we could get a proper political outsider with a brain and business smarts to step up. For a women like Medina to come out of nowhere against the Perry machine and the Bush backed KBH was amazing. If only someone (car dealer, real estate, oilman, football star, war vet etc.) else had given it a go that year.