#heckuvajobteaparty

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week this is what the Weeper of the House, John Boehner, had to say about the GOP having their extortionary ransom demands met on the debt deal:

When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the White House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I'm pretty happy.

Then on Friday, Standard & Poor's downgraded the creditworthiness of the United States for the first time in our history.  S&P | United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To 'AA+' Due To Political Risks, Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative.

I analyzed the S&P statement in The Tea-Publican Hostage Taking Credit Downgrade – Thanks, Mitch! Short version: S&P believe the U.S. government has become ungovernable due to the Tea-Publican stategy of hostage taking, particularly after the federal debt ceiling fiasco, and their unwillingness to do what any sane person would do in this situation — raise revenues.

S&P's conclusion was emphasized by Senator John Kerry on "Meet the Press Gregory." This is "the Tea Party downgrade." Kerry Slams 'Tea Party Downgrade' | TPMDC:

Senator John Kerry (D-MA), appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, blamed Republicans and in particular Tea Party intransigence for the unprecedented S&P downgrade of U.S. credit from AAA to AA+.

"I believe this is without question the Tea Party downgrade," he said. "This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered the will of even many of Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal."

Kerry intimated that the "grand bargain" that President Obama initially negotiated with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), a package of larger spending cuts and revenue increases, was scuttled by a smaller group of Republicans who were unwilling to negotiate at any cost.

"There were some people in the Republican party – and Mitch McConnell even admitted this – who wanted to default," Kerry said. "He said there were people in his party who were willing to shoot the hostage. In the end they found that the hostage was worth ransoming."

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UPDATE: Former White House adviser David Axelrod on Sunday pinned responsibility for the recent U.S. economic downgrade on the Tea Party movement, arguing that the group's political "brinksmanship" during debt ceiling negotiations "brought us to the brink of a default" — and that, subsequently, "this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade." Axelrod: This is a "Tea Party downgrade" – CBS News:

In an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," Axelrod, currently a campaign strategist for President Obama, said the U.S. economic downgrade was "largely a political analysis" and that "there's a broad consensus that [the U.S.] is still the safest place to invest your money."

Nevertheless, he argued, the Tea Party was responsible for blocking a comprehensive deal that could have prevented such a downgrade.

"We can debate the strength of the analysis that they did, the history of S&P and so on," Axelrod told CBS' Bob Schieffer, of Standard & Poor's, the credit rating agency that downgraded the U.S. market from AAA to AA+ on Friday. "They made an egregious analytical error here but theirs was largely a political analysis… They want to see the kind of solution that the president has been fighting for… that will be balanced, that will include revenues, that will deal with some of our long-term issues."