You remember those guys, right? They're the folks who are now cheering at the downgrading of the nation's credit rating:
Here's what happened: Midway through the Fond du Lac event, Florida talk show host Andrea Shea King took the stage. She told the audience that commentators were describing the downgrade of US debt to AA+ from AAA as the "tea party downgrade," laying the blame squarely on Congress' right-wing faction and its supporters. But rather than boo those who claim the tea party caused the downgrade, the 200 or so Wisconsinites in attendance cheered, sounding almost proud to blamed for the downgrade.Well, it is their downgrade - nice of them to take responsibility. From National Journal:
But it’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans. In denouncing the threat of default as a “bargaining chip,” the agency was saying that the GOP strategy had shaken its confidence. Though S&P didn’t mention it, the agency must have been unnerved by the number of Republicans who insisted that it would be fine to blow through the debt ceiling and provoke a default.And do I need to remind anyone that the GOP's absolute refusal to compromise on raising revenue comes directly from the Taxed Enough Already party (ie TEA) wing that's now controlling the GOP?
As many other analysts have noted, the deficit-reduction deal wouldn’t stop debt from climbing faster than the nation’s GDP over the next decade. It warned that the government’s publicly-held debt would climb from 74 percent of GDP at the end of this year to 79 percent by the end of 2011.
But one reason S&P said it had become more gloomy was that it had revised its assumptions about the most likely course of fiscal policy. In previous projections, it said, its “base case scenario” had assumed that Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would expire at the end of 2012, while tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year would be extended. That, it said, would have reduced deficits about $950 billion over ten years.
But the new S&P base case assumes that Congress extends all the Bush tax cuts. “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act,” S&P said.
But back to our even tempered friends at the aforementioned Tea Party. From Politico:
THIENSVILLE, Wis. -- The founder of Tea Party Nation claimed liberal ideology is responsible for "a billion" deaths over the past century during a raucous rally here Saturday in support of one of the six Republican state senators facing a recall election Tuesday.This is up in Wisconsin, where there's lotsa protest over the GOP Governor and recall movement afoot for some State Senators - a recall movement that's permissible under that state's constitution, by the way. And what did Phillips have to say about that? Take a look:
"I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me," said Tea Party Nation CEO Judson Phillips.
Phillips, who a day prior likened protesters of Gov. Scott Walker to Nazi storm troopers, urged a few hundred tea party supporters to turn out for state Sen. Alberta Darling, who is in a ferocious battle with state Rep. Sandy Pasch to hold onto her suburban Milwaukee seat.And then there's the trump card:
Vince Schmuki, a leader of the Ozaukee Patriot tea party group compared the recall effort to a terrorist attack.Liberals have committed genocide, killing billions. Wisconsin citizens exercising their right to protest and recall are Nazis. And of course, they're terrorists.
"This is ground zero," said Schmuki. "You remember what the term ground zero means? We have been attacked."
These are the folks (or the folks much like them) who are now dictating the actions of the Grand Old Party.
Yay for America.
