You have to be more careful to read what I've written about the Tea Party and how I feel about the principles they value.

I've described myself as a fiscal conservative and that's what I am. So in that sense, I think the principles that the Tea Party stands for--cut, cap and balance, as an example--are what this country needs to do.

Where I have been critical of the Tea Party is in how they have conducted themselves in trying to achieve those objectives, They were willing to sacrifice both the reputation of the U.S. as well as do irreparable damage to our economy in the interest of "making their point" in the recent debt ceiling negotiations. They negotiated for things that were never going to happen and they knew it. Some of their members actually said that they thought a default by the country would be a good thing in furthering their ideology. The leader of their caucus and a Presidential candidate voted against the deal that was finally agreed upon, apparently preferring default to anything less than the achievement of all their objectives.

I've said it before here, so maybe it bears repeating. While I agree with the principles of the Tea Party, I think they've done serious damage to the interests of fiscal conservatism by the way they conducted themselves in the last couple of months. They were complete amateurs in the conduct of statesmanship. A good agreement is one which is wise, efficient, and which improves the parties' relationship. Wise agreements satisfy the parties' interests and are fair and lasting. The way the Tea Party negotiated accomplished none of that.

The way the Tea Party conducted the recent negotiation resulted in them getting less in the form of spending cuts and deficit reduction than they could have, and they intensified the acidic and polarized relationship with the Democrats and even caused serious rifts within the Republican Party as a whole. They did more harm than good and it will cost the country and fiscal conservatism in the long run.

Actually, it won't even be in the long run. S&P laid out blame squarely on the dysfunction in Washington, paying specific attention to the use of the debt ceiling as a partisan bargaining chip. Connecting the debt ceiling to the deficit reduction negotiations was the stated intent of the Tea Party alone. So what their conduct will cost the U.S. economy has only started with the credit downgrade.