Rick Perry hits back at Ron Paul for negative ad

(By Chris Moody, The Ticket) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign hit back at fellow Texan Rep. Ron Paul, for a campaign ad that touted Paul's early support for former President Ronald Reagan and knocked Perry for his Democratic past. In the counter-attack, Perry's campaign revealed a letter Paul wrote in 1987 that cited Reagan as a reason why he left the Republican Party.

Paul was one of only a handful of elected lawmakers to support Reagan's failed bid for president in 1976, but he became disenchanted after Reagan won the election in 1980. Paul left the party six years later to run for president for the Libertarian Party and published a scathing letter that blasted Republicans and Reagan, blaming them for "skyrocketing deficits" and legitimizing "big government ... in a way that Democrats never could have accomplished."

"I have gradually and steadily grown weary of the Republican Party's efforts to reduce the size of the federal government," Paul wrote in the letter. "Since then Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party have given us skyrocketing deficits, and astoundingly a doubled national debt. How is it that the party of balanced budgets, with control of the White House and Senate, accumulated red ink greater than all previous administrations put together?"

"There is no credibility left for the Republican Party as a force to reduce the size of government," he added. "That is the message of the Reagan years."