Regular viewers of The Five on Fox may have already seen this, but there was a fairly instructive bit of spittle flying invective directed at Mike Coffman (R-Colorado) by Bob Beckel this week. Things got heated on the show after a clip was played showing Coffman discussing the recent travesty of the families of dead soldiers not receiving their expected benefits. (You can fast forward to around the five minute mark for this exchange.)

Beckel: That is outrageous. What’s that congressman’s name? That bum who just said that? Why didn’t you write the law clearer? How’s that for an idea? You didn’t. And now you’re coming back and trying to suggest that these people didn’t want to pay death benefits? Chuck Hagel is a veteran and you’re not? And you’re sitting there saying that? That’s disgraceful.

There was one small problem with that outburst. Coffman is a twenty year veteran of both the Army and the Marines and served in both Iraq wars. But Coffman has been drawing a lot of fire recently, particularly for his support for a deal which would end the shutdown with a “clean” CR passing the House.

“I have done my best to delay, defund and dismantle all or parts of Obamacare because I believe that much of it will be harmful to this country in the long run,” Coffman wrote. “However, the debate over attaching Obamacare to a spending bill must end and I will argue before my colleagues in the House that we need to pass a ‘clean’ spending bill to immediately reopen the government.”

A number of news outlets have tallied vote counts to see if a spending measure to fund, and ultimately reopen the federal government, would pass the House of Representatives.

This was a 180 degree shift for Coffman, who was unwilling to discuss a “clean” deal to raise the debt ceiling as recently as ten days ago. As of Saturday morning, most of the House members were heading home for the weekend after the White House once again refused to offer any sort of compromise on a plan. The leadership will remain in Washington to at least go through the motions of trying to find a path out of this, but don’t expect any more concrete action until at least Monday. And the beat goes on…