David Axelrod: 'This Is...a Tea Party Downgrade

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top political adviser to President Barack Obama is blaming the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating on tea party Republicans, whom he says were unwilling to compromise on how to reduce the federal debt.

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod tells CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the decision by the Standard & Poor's credit agency to downgrade the U.S. from AAA to AA+ for the first time was strongly influenced by weeks of standoff between Democrats and Republicans over the debt.

Axelrod calls the action, in his words, "a tea party downgrade" and says it's clearly on the backs of lawmakers who were willing to see the country default to get their way.

Axelrod also criticized GOP presidential candidates for not speaking up in favor of compromise.

CBS News:

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."

"For months, the president was saying, let's get together, let's compromise," Axelrod continued. "We thought we had such an arrangement with the Speaker of the House... then he went back to his caucus; he had to yield to the most strident voices in his party. They played brinksmanship with the full faith and credit of the United States. This was the result in that."

"The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade," he declared. "That clearly is on the backs of those who were willing to see the country default."

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."