The Tea Party purists -- those that see no shades of gray, no need for a balanced mix of revenues increases through closing tax loopholes for the wealthy and spending cuts -- should take credit for the S&P downgrade. They got their way.
They may even be happy about it for two reasons: First, many have said they didn't mind a default -- it might actually help "starve the government beast." And second, if S&P downgrade hurts President Obama, then that is a worthy end and so, they would say, the downgrade is a net positive.
Not all Tea Party people hold these extreme absolutist views. But the ones who don't should speak up and disagree with the ones who do.
Lanny Davis is a Fox News contributor. He is the principal in the Washington D.C. law firm of Lanny J. Davis & Associates, which specializes in strategic crisis management and is a partner with Josh Block in the strategic communications and public affairs company Davis-Block. He served as President Clinton’s Special Counsel in 1996-98 and as a member of President Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in 2006-2007. He is the author of “Scandal: How ‘Gotcha’ Politics Is Destroying America” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). He can be found on Facebook and Twitter @LannyDavis. He is the author of the weekly column "Purple Nation," which appears Thursday in Fox News Opinion.
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