from Alex Knepper @ race42008.com:

Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom I have been backing until now, has no chance of becoming the next of governor of Texas. She’s run a boring, lackluster campaign, she’s given no good reason why she should replace Rick Perry, and she’s not doing anything wrong in the Senate. She shouldn’t have run. I’d still take her over Rick Perry, but she’s becoming increasingly irrelevant.

My colleague Adam Brickley likes to talk about how it’s important that there are a couple of “flies in the ointment” of any elected body — and I think I’ve found the the perfect candidate for that position. Debra Medina, the gadfly libertarian who has recently skyrocketed to 16% in the polls and raised $500,000 after a strong showing in the gubernatorial debates, could be an interesting little fly on the national stage. Perry, for all of his name recognition and money, is only at 44% in the polls. In a three-way race, Medina could scrape by if she does a little more than double her current support. And Texas is leave-us-alone enough to consider this oddity of a candidate.

Who is Debra Medina? She is, more than any other candidate running for a prominent office, a product of the Tea Party Movement. She carries a gun in her car. She sued the Republican Party of Texas to make it follow the letter of the law — and won. She quotes the Constitution by section and article in her debates with Perry and Hutchison. She wants to abolish property taxes, eliminate state mandates for health care, respect — really respect — the 10th Amendment, slash taxes, deregulate, and wield her veto pen. And she means it. She quotes Frederic Bastiat on her official website in her section about the proper role of government. Check her out — she even blasts Rick Perry as supporter of big government!:

She has been called a “Ron Paul Libertarian” by some, and that’s essentially true, if we accept the dubious proposition that Ron Paul has a monopoly on respecting the Constitution. She has been a friend of Paul’s for a while and works with his Campaign for Liberty organization.

And thankfully so! The C4L has already celebrated it’s anniversary and gathered many people to the right side of the aisle regarding our liberties. It has been said over the years that if our freedoms are not practiced regularly, they tend to die out. This is quite true with the perpetual encroaching attacks upon them by several forces. Debra Medina aims to protect them 100%.
But here is the most important statement:

She’s got the right stuff, and in a climate like this, she can win.

I would love to see Texas become a national laboratory for libertarian ideals, and Medina has a real chance to make it happen if her supporters spread the word about her candidacy via word-of-mouth. And she — not Rick Perry, not Kay Bailey Hutchison — can enact real, small-government change in Texas. Because she is fundamentally not a calculating, business-as-usual politician. She’s a citizen and an activist, and she echoes Goldwater in not wanting to go to the governor’s mansion to make laws, but to get rid of them. And what will she replace them with? Nothing. Sweet, beautiful nothing. If Texas Republicans want to shake things up, they’ll send Debra Medina, not a self-serving career politician, through this primary.