I think it points to a battle between fly over republicans and eastern seaboard Rino’s for control of the GOP.
I don't think so -- many of Rick Perry's financial backers (he's mortgaged to the eyeballs) are as RiNO-y as Daddy Bush's were, n/w/s Daddy Bush despises Perry as a knuckledragging trailer-trash Dixiecrat and "virtual" Klan member who doesn't know what a shrimp fork is.
Perry's backers tend to be Open-Borders New Money billionaires who employ legions of Mexican nationals sub rosa and like things that way, and don't care if the Mexicans eventually get into American voting booths and vote straight-ticket DemonRat because Tejano Democrats tell them to.
It's a real problem; these guys are as short-sighted as the Carthaginian businessmen who bribed their supreme court to overturn a new sales tax intended to sustain Hannibal in Italy. They beat the tax but lost the war and, eventually, in their grandchildren's time, their city and their families' lives.
And Rick Perry is their guy, bought and paid for. No conservative, he's 100% access-capitalist and crony-capitalist and Available for Rent.