Rick Perry has been overlooked by many conservative Iowans due to his poor debate performances, but this is a mistake. Herman Cain, soon to be followed by former House Speaker Gingrich, received a lot of Perry’s former supporters. With Cain out, that leaves two people to compare Gov. Perry to: Gingrich and Obama.

The comparison with the president is a very good one for the governor. He has created numerous jobs, and has arguably made Texas one of the most economically sound states in the nation. In addition, he is a strong constitutionalist and conservative. Americans are looking for all of these traits and results in 2012.

Gingrich is the other top tier candidate that is considered conservative at the moment. A look at his record, however, says differently. Gingrich supported the individual mandate at one point, at the national level. Perry is a true Washington outsider where the Speaker has spent most of his time there. He went on record as recently as 2007 stating his support for a Medicare voucher program, but in a effort to sound intellectual threw Paul Ryan, a true conservative, under the bus.

Republicans are supposed to be the party of family and morality, but again Gingrich falls short. Gingrich is on his third wife and certainly wasn’t faithful to the other two. Rick Perry, on the other hand, has always had a great relationship with his wife.

That’s also not to count out the fact that Gingrich is the only speaker in history to be found guilty of ethics violations. Despite that, we are supposed to take him at his word that he gets paid millions of dollars for “history lessons” from companies raking in billions of dollars from the tax payers.

If Americans want the same as we have now, big business and big government working together while the tax payers suffer, then Newt is great. Otherwise we should look at the records of some politicians outside of Washington.