5 Texas Presidential Tips For Rick Perry in 2012

WASHINGTON (TheStreet) -- Rick Perry has yet to decide whether he'll test voter tolerance for another presidential candidate from Texas, but his Lone Star State predecessors have helped him clear the path to the presidency a bit.

The third-term Republican governor of Texas has hinted that he's close to making a decision about entering the 2012 presidential race, and the latest polls indicate it may be in his interests to take the leap. Even amid an already crowded GOP field, Perry is running second to only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in a Pew Research poll released Thursday. His nine-point deficit in that poll shrinks to two in a Gallup poll released just a day earlier, while CNN (TWX) and Fox News (NWS) polls released a week earlier show him trailing Romney by only two to three points.

His relatively late start means little considering the powerful supporters who've been in his corner before. Perry raised nearly $54 million between 2009 and 2010 for last year's re-election campaign. Federal rules for campaign contributions would tamp down those numbers a bit, but make donors including Wal-Mart (WMT) heir Alice Walton, Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane, oilman T. Boone Pickens and billionaire tea party backer David Koch no less valuable.

As Texas Congressman and 2012 presidential hopeful Ron Paul knows all too well, however, it's not enough to label yourself a fiscal conservative and just jump into the race. It's not enough to smack talk the 16th Amendment and rail against income tax if you're just going to make the same mistakes as the folks who came before you. It's not even enough to play to the base if you're going to mix up the message. There's a lot to learn from the successes and failures of the Texas presidential hopefuls who came before, and we found five examples Perry might want to consider before making his decision:

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