Imagine if on the night Paul Revere made his famous ride, the colonists cursed him softly, rolled over and went back to sleep. Then imagine that the red coats were able to stop the Revolution even before it began and all those would be revolutionaries blamed Mr. Revere. That alternate reality came to mind today when I tuned into CBS's Face the Nation. David Axelrod, President Barack Obama's chief re-election strategist, appeared on the program and referred to the US credit rating downgrade as "essentially a tea party downgrade."

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With a record of unprecedented economic failure to show for the president's first two and a half years in office, it's understandable why the man charged with his re-election campaign would be desperate to blame someone else for all the failed policies. So far, this president has increased the national debt by 25%, wasted over $800 billion on a non-stimulating stimulus bill and pushed a new trillion-dollar-plus unsustainable entitlement program while ignoring the coming insolvency of existing entitlement programs. He has created an anti-business environment with new regulations and constant threats of job-killing tax increases as the national unemployment rate remains above 9 percent.

But to attempt to shift the blame from President Obama and his Congressional accomplices to those who tried to warn the nation about the consequences of all those irresponsible policies would be shameful if anyone on Team Obama understood the concept of shame.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), considered a member of the Republican establishment as opposed to a tea party supporter, responded to Mr. Axelrod's accusation with the facts. "If we'd listened to the tea party, we'd have $4 trillion reductions in debt over time and not been downgraded," he said on the same CBS program. "The tea party hasn't destroyed Washington; Washington was destroyed before the tea party got there."

Hopefully the number of tea party affiliated lawmakers will grow with each coming election and Washington will heed their warnings instead of trying to shoot the messengers.