In regard to Senate republicans working to repeal and replace Obamacare, with repeated fails to get a vote on their replacement health care bill the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). Those same Republicans have repeatedly been asked about what happens next. The broad suggestion has been that they would work with democrats in a bipartisan manner specifically to pass the Senate Republican bill. Since Tuesday when a clean-bill repeal effort was rejected, there has been more of an indication that Republicans were ready for a bipartisan compromise.

But Republican leaders have expressed reluctance in going to Democrats.

Democrats won't 'come' to the GOP table

One of the problems, however, is that for Democrats; working together with Republicans to repeal Obamacare a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a straight up deal-breaker. The obvious reason for this is that Democrats prefer to fix the problems with the current seven-year old ACA rather than to pass any bills that would promise to take it away from millions of Americans. But working to fix the ACA is also a deal-breaker for Republicans who have for six-years said they would repeal the ACA. President Trump made this clear when he met with Senate Republicans at the White House on Wednesday, saying they had to keep trying.

On June 25, Chuck Todd of NBC's Meet the Press interviewed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) where he asked him (3:03 in YouTube video above) if Democrats would consider coming to the table with Republicans. Sen. Sanders took issue with the view that Democrats would go to Republicans rather than the other way around. Appropriately, with repeated failures to pass the BCRA -- and the House Republicans' American Health Care Act (AHCA) -- Republicans would need to approach Democrats and on the minority party's terms.

GOP uses bipartisanship as a threat

On July 16, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) was also on Meet the Press where (at 1:25) he blamed Democrats for making the passage of the BCRA a partisan issue by "not lifting a finger to help their constituents who are hurting."

But in recent interviews with Republicans, there is no indication that the Grand Old Party (GOP) are going to resort to working with Democrats and have only referred to doing so with reluctance or as a threat.

In fact, after the recent failure of the repeal, Cornyn even said on Tuesday that it was unfortunate that they would have to work with Democrats but would make due with the situation to the best of their ability. This sentiment is clear in that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they would hold another vote for a 2015 repeal only bill that former President Obama vetoed.

On Wednesday after the meeting, McConnell said they would also hold another vote on their replacement again. But the reason why the GOP would use bipartisanship as a threat is that Republican constituents have become more extreme against Democrats and, therefore, conservative lawmakers can generate more support from their base by using such rhetoric.

This is despite the view gathered from a recent poll which said that 50 percent of Americans supported Obamacare. The results come from polling 1,001 Americans and with an error of 3.5 percentage points.

Subconsciously methodical anti-Liberal mindset

On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, when Trump surrogate Michael Caputo spoke about bipartisanship, he made a similar gesture that Democrats go to Republicans -- perhaps subconsciously -- by saying that he remembers "when Democrats were marrying Republicans," rather than the other way around.

While it's perhaps -- in the words of Reince Priebus -- a "nothing burger", it's likely that the way Caputo made the statement, it was also a meticulous effort to present who should come to who.

Outside of health care, the Trump administration has been persistent in their attacks against Democrats blaming them for the obstruction of accepting the President's cabinet nominees. This is despite the fact that the White House had already made it blatantly clear that they don't want the government to work to its full capacity. In this case, it shows that much like Trump Jr's intent to collude with Russian officials, that there is also intent from the White House to keep Congress and the country divided.
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