Interesting take by Mimi Swartz in the Sunday Times Magazine on Rick Perry and his Presidential aspirations facing an Old South-New South divide. Swartz, executive editor at Texas Monthly, has a bird’s-eye view of the backstabbing and jockeying. An excerpt:

“What is surprising is the situation among Republicans. ‘There’s no doubt that there’s been a split in the Republican Party in Texas between the country-club wing and the much more conservative base segment of the party,’ says Matt Mackowiak, an Austin-based political consultant and a Perry supporter. That divide is only going to expand. When Karl Rove takes digs at the governor on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page, and when George H. W. and Barbara Bush endorse Perry’s gubernatorial primary competitor Kay Bailey Hutchison, that’s the sound of early salvos in an intrastate, intraparty class war.

This isn’t just about snobbery but about something far more important here: money. Texans who have spent zillions to brag about the state’s opera and ballet companies, and who have paid the likes of Santiago Calatrava for architectural gewgaws, also know that multinational corporations aren’t willing to locate in a place that has awful schools and toxic air and that wears its provincialism proudly.”

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Santiago Calatrava’s Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas: