Sometimes you hear something so daft that you figure whoever is saying it must be pretty weak between the ears. With Rick Perry, such times generally occur whenever he opens his mouth. It's just a matter of how daft, and about what.
Or so it seems to us. But maybe he is up to something.
Take for instance his recent stand on foreign aid. You could take it any of three ways.
1) He's just stupid, and doesn't realize how foreign aid, a small part of the budget, is a very powerful tool which saves many times its cost in potential military expenditure.
2) He knows better, but foreign aid is one of those things that red meat Republicans hate. You can spend any amount you like to kill people, and Baby Jesus will send you to heaven, but give somebody a sou to feed himself and you're a wimp who's going to hell. Perry thus panders to them.
3) He knows better, but still means it, because it's in his backers' best interest..
What would happen if all foreign aid were zeroed out except to Israel? Well, first off, he's sending a big message: The US supports the Netanyahu settlement policy, and happily tells everyone else in the region to go fuck off.
This is not designed to get the Jewish vote, btw; most Jewish voters are Democrats and know better. Most American Jews dislike Netanyahu anyway. His target, politically, is the evangelicals, for whom a final war (Armageddon) in the middle east is part of their dispensationalist fantasy. They assume the Jews will then all die fighting the evil Muslims, making way for that good christian Jesus to return. (Hey, it's not my idea, you can't just make this stuff up.)
So let's put these together. Cut off foreign aid and then we lose our peace-making influence. Feed the settlers and they'll start a war in the middle east. And then what? The Arab oil sheiks will again cut off supplies to the US, and probably to the whole world. The price of oil will skyrocket! Who comes out ahead? Texas oilmen. Perry's key backers. Texas makes out like a bandit. There will be pressure to open more of the US to oil, including maybe the east coast offshore, not to mention ANWR, Yellowstone, and other protected fields. $200/bbl oil will be a weapon wielded against everything environmental.
So is Perry nuts, or is he giving us a hint as to his goals?