As Governor Rick Perry puts it, “Government isn’t difficult in theory — don’t spend all the money.”

Texas’s formula for success is classical conservatism: Low spending enables low taxes, while a liberal regulatory environment attracts the capital that makes capitalism work. Texas has a state government that is structurally incapable of taking on the grand political ambitions that characterize states such as California and New York, which leaves the private sector with a relatively open theater of operation. With conservatives at the national level looking to the states for models of what works, Texas can provide a blueprint for a prudent and bipartisan conservatism that is neither hostage to ideological excess nor relegated to merely trying to put Leviathan on a leash.

During the “greatest recession of our lifetime”, Texas has become:

1. Home to 6 of the 25 largest cities in the country, more than any other state.

2. A trillion-dollar economy that would make it the 15th-largest national economy in the world.

3. A job-creating machine that is estimated to have created 70 percent of the new jobs in the United States in 2008.

4. Home to America’s highest-volume port.

5. Home to the largest medical center in the world.

6. The headquarters of more Fortune 500 companies than any other state, having surpassed New York in 2008.

There are those who would look at this and say, “Not bad for a state with no income tax and a part-time legislature that meets only every two years.” And there are those who would say, “You could only accomplish this in a state with no income tax and a part-time legislature that meets only every two years.”

God bless Texas…