Isaac was kind enough to link it recently and, as he noted at the time, it's not very long at all. S&P would not have downgraded us if we'd made the $4 trillion worth of debt reduction they stated as their requirement to prevent that downgrade, and repeatedly referred to the uncertainty now existent in our government as the principal reason for the downgrade even after a (smaller than $4 trillion) was reached. If that's not explicit enough, an S&P senior director publicly stated last week that their fears were that "people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default.... That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable. This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns".

My other thread ought to make clear how I feel about third parties and alienation, but the latter is misdirected in most of the Tea Party (which won't be an example of the former as long as they keep hijacking GOP primaries to oust party moderates). As to our credit downgrade, you have every right to dispute S&P made it because of the Tea Party, but if you do you're arguing with S&P, not me.