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Democrats and Republicans seem to agree that Standard & Poor's lowered rating of U.S. debt is a bad thing, but are trying to assign blame to the other side for the downgrade.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) is poised to make S&P's decision late Friday to revise its rating of U.S. debt from a prime AAA rating downward to AA+ a central element in his campaign to unseat President Obama.

But Obama advisers were out in force over the weekend to lay the blame for the downgrade at the feet of Tea Party Republicans in Congress and, by extension, GOP presidential candidates who had lined up behind the conservative proposals that never became law. They assailed S&P, too, for allegedly miscalculating the figures that led to the downgrade.

“The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade,” David Axelrod, a top adviser for the president's reelection campaign, said Sunday on CBS. The United States came close to def! ault, Axelrod said, because “strident voices” in the Tea Party were willing to see the country fall short of its debt obligations.

“Not one of the Republican presidential candidates stood up in opposition to that,” he said.

Virtually all of those GOP presidential candidates took turns blaming Obama on Friday evening when news of S&P’s downgrade emerged after U.S. markets closed.

Romney's campaign in particular is proud of its candidate's record when it comes to the ratings agencies, because as governor the agency upgraded the state’s bond rating.

“When I was governor, S&P rewarded Massachusetts with a credit-rating upgrade for our sound fiscal management and the underlying strength of our economy. That didn’t happen by accident," Romney said Monday in a statement. “The president’s failure to put the nation’s fiscal and economic house in order has caused a massive loss of confidence that resulted in an embarra! ssing downgrade. In the Carter era, it was called ‘malaise.â! €™ Under President Obama, it’s called meltdown.”

Of course, Romney isn't the only candidate to have presided over an upgraded rating for his state during his time as governor. Other candidates maintained prime ratings during their time in office, and only former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) saw a downgrade in his state's rating â€" five months onto the job, and by only one of the three major agencies, Moody's.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has been particularly vocal about the looming danger of U.S. debt, going so far as to refuse to vote for any proposal to raise the debt limit. In the Tea Party congresswoman's mind, none went far enough to rein in the spending! that contributes to rising U.S. debt.

Bachmann seized on the downgrade over the weekend by renewing calls for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's resignation.

“The president's refusal to remove Treasury Secretary Geithner shows the president has no plan to restore the triple-A credit rating to the United States of America,” she said while campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, according to ABC News.

Geithner, who had been contemplating resignation following the bruising debt-ceiling fight, said Sunday he would stay on as Treasury secretary through the 2012 election.

The issue of the S&P downgrade, ! the first such negative revision in U.S. history, comes agains! t the ba ckdrop of the larger issue of the poor performance of the economy, an issue that is weighing down Obama's popularity.

But whether S&P's move on Friday will have political repercussions for an election that's still more than a year away could depend on the long-term practical impact of the downgrade. U.S. debt is still viewed as safe debt, relative to other global economies risking more severe, immediate debt crises.

Still, the downgrade provides the candidates vying for Obama's job short-term fodder to use against the president, if nothing else. U.S. stock markets opened downward shortly after trading began Monday morning after last week's sell-offs on Wall Street.