doctors who performed abortions should be subject to the death penalty--doesn't think it's a conversation worth having and that we're all missing the real problem. Certainly, he doesn't like the media's role in this, although it's unclear if that is the real problem of which he speaks.

Finally, on his third try, Gregory gets Coburn to acknowledge that yes, there's no place for the kind of ratcheted up rhetoric that we're seeing.

DAVID GREGORY: --its fine to take-- it's fine to take on the media. And-- and a lot of people would support you in that. That's fine. But I asked you a very specific question. Do you reject those who believe that the President wants to injure the country and that will-- that will deny Americans liberty? And do you think-- violent metaphor of any kind is simply over the line in political discourse?

SENATOR TOM COBURN: Of course I reject that. But the point is, is we're spendin' all this time talkin' about-- something that i-- has nothing to do with the events, and what the real problems are, we're not spending time working on.

What a big concession from Dr. No. We're not getting to work on the bigger issues either, thanks to him and his penchant for putting a hold on everything.

DAVID GREGORY: I want to-- talk about a few agenda items for-- Congress getting back to session. But I do wanna ask about political discourse and where this conversation should go. Ron Brownstein writes in his column in The National Journal this week a column that's entitled Apocalypse Always. And here's a point that he makes in conclusion of the piece.

"When political arguments are routinely framed as threats to America's fundamental character, the odds rise that the most disturbed among us will be tempted to resist the governing genda-- agenda by any means necessary." Is that the real problem, Senator Coburn, is a description of political discourse and political disagreement as being apocalyptic-- having such huge consequence for the direction of the country?

SENATOR TOM COBURN: I-- I think that's a false premise totally. Everybody has tried in the media. I’ve pretty well been-- disgusted with all the media, right and left, after this episode. Because what it does is it raises and says that there's a connection. And-- and the President rightly said there was no connection to this.

DAVID GREGORY: But that-- But that's not what--

SENATOR TOM COBURN: --with political discourse to this event.

DAVID GREGORY: That's-- that's not the premise here.

SENATOR TOM COBURN: No, what he said was--

DAVID GREGORY: But Senator Coburn, you-- you know as well as I do that there are people-- and it is true that it's very often on the right who describe President Obama as somehow an outsider who is trying to usher in a system that will do two things, that will injure America and deny them of their liberty. Do you condemn that belief--and try to reject it? I'm not making a sweeping generalization. I'm certainly not tying it to the event. That, in and of itself, is a strain of thought, is it not?

SENATOR TOM COBURN: Well-- the-- the-- there's no question there's-- there's all sorts of strains of thought. But the-- the problem I have with the premise, David, i-- is that we're disconnecting what the real problems are in our country. And we're spending all this time talking about political discourse rather than talking about the real risk to our country, which-- we need to quit payin' attention to what all the media says. We need to start watching, as Chuck Schumer has said, what we say.

DAVID GREGORY: Okay, but Senator Coburn--

SENATOR TOM COBURN: And what we say--

DAVID GREGORY: --its fine to take-- it's fine to take on the media. And-- and a lot of people would support you in that. That's fine. But I asked you a very specific question. Do you reject those who believe that the President wants to injure the country and that will-- that will deny Americans liberty? And do you think-- violent metaphor of any kind is simply over the line in political discourse?

SENATOR TOM COBURN: Of course I reject that. But the point is, is we're spendin' all this time talkin' about-- something that i-- has nothing to do with the events, and what the real problems are, we're not spending time working on.