Obama’s chief strategist stupidly blames Tea Party for downgrade

By Gabriella Schwarz (CNN):  President Barack Obama’s chief re-election strategist on Sunday blamed Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on tea party conservatives who made raising the federal debt ceiling a political issue.

“This is essentially a tea party downgrade,” David Axelrod told the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “The tea party brought us to the brink of a default.”

Axelrod, who left the White House earlier this year to focus on Obama’s 2012 campaign, said the country was pushed to the financial brink by some conservative Republicans.

“It was the wrong thing to do to push the country to that point. And it’s something that that should never have happened,” Axelrod said. “That clearly is on the backs of those who were willing to see the country default, those very strident voices in the tea party.”

However, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham pushed back, saying that proposals from members of the tea party movement could have prevented the S&P downgrade.

“If we’d listened to the tea party, we’d have $4 trillion reductions in debt over time and not been downgraded,” the South Carolina senator said on the CBS program. “The tea party hasn’t destroyed Washington; Washington was destroyed before the tea party got there.”

Read more at CNN HERE.