Rachel Maddow: S&P Downgrade Evidences ‘Republican Intransigence’ Is The Problem In Washington

Rachel Maddow appeared on the Meet the Press roundtable and added some fireworks as she declared that the S&P downgrade was an indictment of Republican’s negotiating strategy throughout the debt crisis and how they believe that “any deal is a bad deal.” Now she hopes that this can serve as a political wake-up call to convince everyone that Washington is simply not working.

Maddow’s interpretation of the steps taken by S&P:

“The downgrade message, whatever you think of S&P, they mentioned the need for increased revenues and for revenues being on the table three separate times. They absolutely indicted the fashionable intransigence of the Republican party right now in Washington. . . . We did something insane with getting that close to defaulting on purpose.”

While not all agreed with Maddow’s assessment, David Gregory also brought up a separate problem:

“We may be cutting the deficit some, but frankly Austan Goolsbee and the economic team projected growth for this country that has been wildly off-the-mark so far this year.”

What made Gregory’s dig at Goolsbee particularly interesting was that Goolsbee himself was also sitting on the panel and yet awkwardly just watched Maddow respond to the set-up about his “wildly off-the-mark” projections.

Watch the clip from NBC below:

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