Andrea Mitchell, interviewing Sen. Tom Harkin:

Are you willing to give up the public option, are you willing to trigger it or delay it or make it less of a, more of an option and less important in a final package, in order to get a deal.

I'm still waiting for Mitchell to ask a Joe Lieberman or a Ben Nelson if they will insist on getting everything they want, or whether they are willing to accept a public option “in order to get a deal” ...

In his response, Harkin indirectly illustrated Mitchell's double-standard:

Now, you know, a lot of bills that pass around here, we don't like everything that's in them. There may be one or two things we don't like. But we do like the majority of things that are in the bill. And I think that's what we're looking at with health reform. Some of my colleagues may not like a public option, but they like all the other things. And I don't think they'll vote against a bill simply because it has a public option in it.