AUSTIN—in a clear signal that he may run again for President, Gov. Rick Perry (R—TX) today published an Op-Ed blasting Ron Paul’s foreign policy.

“Look, I haven’t read the papers for a while,” said Perry. “But my recollection is that he had some pretty dumb stuff in there about Iraq, or maybe Afghanistan. And I can’t remember exactly what he said about Israel but I recall being irked by it.”

Perry said that “Ron Paul’s mistaken views on places like France and Europe will drag us back to the days of the McEnroe doctrine.” He added that “there was something I think he said once about Mexico, or maybe Canada—it was, like, ‘maybe we should tax them,’ or maybe something about the food—whatever it was, it was just flat wrong.” He also said Paul gave insufficient focus to the border with Australia.

Perry was relatively upfront about his motives in writing the editorial. “Look, I don’t want people to think of me as a policy lightweight,” he said in a subsequent interview. “I want people to think of me as the guy who doesn’t care if children die in my state from preventable diseases.”

Gov. Rick Perry successfully answers a gotcha question about which one is the “index” finger