You have to respect a conservative Republican who tells his colleagues that the only way they're going to get a deficit reduction deal is to raise tax revenue, no matter what contortions he has to twist himself into to cover himself.
Tom Coburn has separated himself from current GOP orthodoxy, and specifically from a fundamentalist interpretation of Grover Norquist's no-new-taxes pledge, by degrees. Now, even as he withdraws (temporarily, he implies) from the Gang of Six purporting to negotiate a tax reform/deficit reduction deal, he's completed the clarification. And incidentally, effectively told Norquist to go fuck himself.