While Dems get set to take the stage for their convention in Charlotte this week — and the national GOP begins to weigh the impact of its own recently ended meeting — here are two Texans who can return home boasting a net positive: Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Senate nominee Ted Cruz.

Though the GOP garnered only tepid results from the convention, as reported Monday by Gallup, Perry and Cruz can both look back on success — one man burnishing his star for upcoming greatness, and the other dusting off his own and readying for a comeback.

The pair of Republicans had very different roles in the four-day Republican National Convention last week in Tampa — both from each other, and, more interestingly, from what anyone would have predicted just a year ago.

“If you want to make God smile, tell him your plans,” Perry told Texas delegates at their Thursday morning breakfast meeting, about 14 hours before presidential nominee Mitt Romney was set to take the stage with an acceptance speech. “Well, my plan was to be speaking. At the convention. Tonight.”

The audience chuckled with some affection, in apparent acknowledgment of the governor’s whirlwind efforts to regain some popularity and credibility with “my Texans,” as he referred to them at the convention, the grassroots Republican activists who are still smarting from his failed presidential bid and his support of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst over tea party darling Cruz in that bloody and protracted primary fight.

Perry grabbed buzz and headlines early on when he told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that he “absolutely” would run for president again and that 2016 was a long way away, with plenty of time for “good things” to happen.

Then he managed to stay newsworthy for the rest of the week, predicting a successful voucher bill in Texas during the next legislative session, warning Sean Hannity live on set from the convention floor of the Democrats “doing whatever it takes” to win, suggesting that he’d run for yet another gubernatorial term in 2014 (already after 14 years in office) and showing up on the convention floor to shake hands and pose for pictures with the Texas delegation.

It’s where Perry — much like W — is his best political self: At home (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) in front of his Texans, speaking off the cuff, without the pressure of teleprompters. W was like that, too: much more engaging, charming and confident in Texas than he ever was on the national stage.

Digging himself out of what some called a political grave, largely dug in the moment he forgot the third agency he would reform as president during a televised presidential debate, seemed to be Perry’s focus throughout the week. He tweeted from blogger’s row and interviewed on the radio with grassroots fave Mike Huckabee.

Read this Houston Chronicle report on Perry’s movements, touted by political observers as a win for the longest-standing governor in Texas.

“He’s doing what he needs to do,” Lawrence Levy, a political scientist at Hofstra University, told the Chronicle. “He’s going on TV. He’s helping out people who can help him in the future.”

A year ago, there were plenty of Republicans who would have put some money down — well, did, in fact, put money down — on the notion that it would be Perry on the stage that night, accepting the nomination instead of Mitt. You might recall those heady days last summer for the GOP when Perry was a political rock star who drew adoring crowds across the nation.

There were also, at the time, plenty of GOPers who in a million years would not have predicted that the rock star of the Texas GOP in Tampa would actually be political newcomer Ted Cruz, whose remarks on the main stage at the national convention, preceding N.J. Gov. Chris Christie and Ann Romney, were touted as one of the better speeches of the convention.

The money was on Dewhurst, who has won statewide office several times and was favorite to easily sweep the field in the GOP primary instead losing the race to Cruz in a runoff.

After his speech, which you can see in its entirety here, the conservative Washington Times called Cruz “one of the fastest rising stars in the GOP,” while other media outlets pointed to his Princeton debate credentials as the reason he commanded the stage and gave the tea party conventioneers exactly what they wanted: energy, motivation, a small-government, pro-freedom, filled-with-red-meat message.

Cruz used the convention as any high-octane political newcomer would: to rally his supporters and create new ones. In Texas, where no Democrat running for U.S. Senate has gotten more than about 1/3 of the vote in over a decade, it’s an uphill battle for Paul Sadler, Cruz’s November opponent. Cruz maintains that he’s focused on convincing Texas voters to pick him, and chances are they will.

At the convention, his purpose —whether he wants to state it or not — was to find his financial supporters on the national level. That's what he needs to do for Cruz.

On a national level, Cruz's appearance is a way for the Republicans to gain support among Hispanics by showing Hispanics on stage. The Republican National Convention is where all that happens, both for Cruz and for the national party.

The Texas GOP delegation, by the way, got one of the worst spots on the convention floor: near the back of the floor, blocked by other states, but not up in the stands where they could see anything. They were also relegated to a resort hotel shared with Louisiana about half an hour from the Tampa convention location, which meant early mornings, late nights and long commutes every day to the action.

But they enjoyed their own attention, fighting with party leaders over delegation rules and rallying in support of Congressman Ron Paul whom Texans still adore. They heard from speakers including GOP chairman Steve Munisteri and some of their own state leaders.

During the conventions of 2000 and 2004, of course, the Texas delegation, dressed in their signature white cowboy hats and Texas flag button-down shirts, took front and center when their own man was the nominee.

This time around, the only Texan to show up on stage was Cruz, who hasn't been elected to anything yet. But the delegates told reporters they were more than happy to continue to work with the party, even if it did look like the Lone Star State had been sidelined.

“We don't have quite the muscle we had in the past," Houston delegate and Rules Committee member Butch Davis told the Houston Chronicle, "so now we operate more behind the scenes."