Via Think Progress:
KING: Rush right or is the Republican leadership in the House right?
COBURN: Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s the cynicism of our politics today. Nobody in either party wants to be vulnerable on any issue and where’s the real leadership? You know what we lack is where is the clarity of purpose. Nobody disagrees that BP is going to be held accountable. The question is how and when and that’s a small matter right now in terms of the problem that we have.
(CROSSTALK)
KING: Do you have any problem with the White House negotiating this deal?
COBURN: Well I’m not sure it’s fair negotiations because you’re dealing with one very strong party and one very weak party in terms of public relations. But you know basically holding them accountable is where we want to be and this is one way of doing it.
If you take Republicans at face value, they don't have a problem with holding BP accountable -- they just have a problem holding BP accountable in the way that the Obama Administration has.
Of course, given that the Obama Administration has secured at least $20 billion in compensation for economic damages (not including punitive fines and cleanup costs), if you're against what the Obama Administration has done, you'd pretty damn well have a plan for getting more than $20 billion -- otherwise you're just another Republican against making BP pay.
So when you have Joe Barton apologizing to BP, Rush Limbaugh carping about "organized crime," Michele Bachmann calling it "wealth resdistribution," and Tom Price saying its a shakedown, it's impossible for them to credibly argue that they really want BP to pay. It's obvious they think BP is being forced to pay too much.
The GOP priority isn't making sure people are compensated for damages inflicted on them by BP. Instead, in the words of Tom Coburn, their priority is in making sure we are "fair" to BP. That might be an absurd position, but Coburn does deserve a little bit of credit: at least he's being honest about it.