This is why Standard & Poor downgraded our nation’s credit rating.

In last night’s debate, each of the eight GOP presidential candidates on stage broke a land-speed record for rejecting a hypothetical, massive, multi-trillion dollar spending cut deal. Why? Because, in the hypothetical, the package would also include tax increases amounting 10 percent of the spending cuts.

None of them even had to stop and think about it.

Want further proof?

A Standard & Poor’s director said for the first time Thursday that one reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was that several lawmakers expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default — a position put forth by some Republicans.

Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that “people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” Mukherji said.

“That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.”

[h/t to Steve Benen]

The distance between the Republicans’ rhetoric and anything the American public would even remotely accept as tolerable is greater than distance between the the Earth and the Sun. The logical implications of what these candidates are telling the public are so radical that no one would dare to make them explicit. I guess that’s our job.