Unpacking Rick Perry's God shtick

Christopher Hitchens, casting a skeptical eye on Rick Perry's God shtick, wonders: "Does the Texas governor believe his idiotic religious rhetoric, or is he just pandering for votes?" The Hitch was in the Lone Star State when Perry "announced that he was using the authority vested in him to call for prayers for rain. These incantations and beseechments, carrying the imprimatur of government, were duly offered to the heavens. The heavens responded by remaining, along with the parched lands below, obstinately dry. Perry did not, of course, suffer politically for making an idiot of himself in this way." Hitchens concludes that "religion in politics is more like an insurance policy than a true act of faith. Professing allegiance to it seldom does you any harm ... My bet would be that, just as Perry probably wouldn't have tried to take credit if there had been rain after his ostentatious intercessions, so he doesn't lose much actual sleep over doctrinal matters, personal saviorhood, and the rest of it. As with his crass saber-rattling about Texan secession a season or so back, or his more recent semitough talk about apparently riding Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke out of town on a rail, it is probably largely boilerplate, and mainly for the rubes." Sounds about right, though it makes it no less pathetic.