Obama’s soft response to Tea Party draws liberal criticism
Others are phrasing this as a question: how much more rope must Obama pass out before the Tea Party is well and truly hung in the public’s eye?
Liberals are growing frustrated with President Obama’s soft response to the Tea Party after fractious negotiations over the debt limit led to the loss of nation’s AAA credit rating on Friday.
Republicans and Democrats have unleashed fusillades of attack against each other in the wake of the announcement but Obama has stayed quiet, frustrating his party’s base.
“It’s hard to see how we avoid a Tea-Party recession if the president who has the biggest megaphone in the country is not willing to speak clearly on the issue,” Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, told The Hill in a Saturday afternoon interview.
Ruben said Obama should never have allowed Tea-Party lawmakers in the House to treat a debt-limit extension as a concession to Democrats given the nation’s entire economy depended on it.
By accepting the threat of a national default as politically valid, Obama put himself at a major disadvantage in the talks, he said.
“It’s a terrible deal that will destroy jobs and big part of reason is because president accepted the premise that it was okay to hold economy hostage,” Ruben said. “Instead of saying, ‘this is outrageous’ and ‘You will not threaten the full faith and credit of the U.S.,’ and telling America what the Republicans are doing, he sat down and said, ‘let’s bargain’ and tried to show he was more reasonable.”