For the first time, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said her 2008 vote for the financial bailout was a "mistake" knowing what she knows now about how the money was spent.
But, she claims Gov. Rick Perry supported the vote, too.
With early voting for the primary starting in less than three months and trailing Perry in the polls for the Republican nomination, Hutchison launched her toughest attacks yet in a taping for Inside Texas Politics.
The emotional tone and the charges in the race between Hutchison and Perry are sharpening.
"It is obscene the things that he has done to me and said to me personally," she said.
The Perry campaign denies the governor attacked her personally.
On Inside Texas Politics, which airs Sunday at 9 a.m. on Channel 8, Hutchison energetically criticized Perry for mandating a cervical cancer vaccine for school girls.
"I'm the conservative," Hutchison said. "Gov. Perry talks like a conservative, but governs like a liberal."
However, Perry has built his campaign against Hutchison around an issue that's roiled Republican voters and that Hutchison supported: the bailout of banks and Wall Street in October 2008.
But, seeing how the money was used, Hutchison said she would do it differently now.
"If I had known today how they were going to spend it, I don't think any of us would have voted for it," she said.
Ironically, it's something she and Perry agree on considering what Perry said when he appeared as a guest earlier in November.
"Anybody who made that vote, I'll betcha they all wish they could go back and have that vote back again," he said.
"Did you pounce on him like you're pouncing on me?" she said after watching Perry's remarks. "Did you pounce because he wrote a letter to every senator saying vote for it because we're going to have a financial meltdown?"
Hutchison refers to a letter Perry co-signed as head of the Republican Governors Association with the Democratic Governors Association to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
They urged Congress to "pass an economic recovery package."
Although released the day of the senate vote, October 1, 2008, a Perry campaign spokesman said Perry didn't endorse the bailout, just a solution.
Hutchison doesn't buy it.
"He's the one who's disingenuous here," Hutchison said. "Of course, it was a mistake knowing what we know now. But, at the time, [Perry] said, 'Vote for it.' We did, Sen. Cornyn and myself."
She also criticized Perry's salvos at the Texas Republican congressional delegation.
"We're talking about federal issues where he is popping off," she said. "He's throwing grenades in; we're on the ground."
And for supporting the business margins tax that raised taxes on some businesses.
E-mail bwatson@wfaa.com
