As Bob just pointed out, 65% of Teabaggers and 53% of all Republicans believe that breaching the debt limit is really 'no big deal.'
Why do they think this?
One possible explanation is having their own elected officials say things like this:
“We should not be having a discussion with a artificial deadline of August 2nd, set by the President so the President can extort a deal through his reelection period. That’s not right, it’s not what the American people expect us to do.”
Here we have a sitting congressman accusing the President of the United States of extortion and accusing the secretary of the treasury of flat-out lying. And since there are no real consequences or associated media outrage when men like Darrell Issa say such ridiculous things, it sends a very clear -and wrong- message to the batshit voting base.
With the way things are going, Big Business may chose to help more Democrats get elected in 2012, or at the very least won't donate a penny to Republicans, just to make sure their Teabagger Frankenstein is snuffed out of existence now that it has become a real threat to them.
Let this be a lesson in the unforeseen consequences of Astroturfing.