spacewalk-clone-by-date is failing with sre_constants.error: "multiple repeat Python traceback"

Issue

• Running spacewalk-clone-by-date is failing with the following python traceback

 Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/spacewalk-clone-by-date", line 253, in <module>
    sys.exit(abs(main() or 0))
  File "/usr/bin/spacewalk-clone-by-date", line 243, in main
    return cloneByDate.main(args)
  File "/usr/share/rhn/utils/cloneByDate.py", line 193, in main
    cloner.remove_packages()
  File "/usr/share/rhn/utils/cloneByDate.py", line 426, in remove_packages
    cloner.remove_removelist(self.removelist)
  File "/usr/share/rhn/utils/cloneByDate.py", line 614, in remove_removelist
    self.__remove_packages(pkg_names, self.reset_new_pkgs().values(), "Removelist")
  File "/usr/share/rhn/utils/cloneByDate.py", line 598, in __remove_packages
    reg_ex = re.compile("$|".join(full_pkgs) + '$')
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/re.py", line 190, in compile
    return _compile(pattern, flags)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/re.py", line 245, in _compile
    raise error, v # invalid expression
sre_constants.error: multiple repeat