Republican Governor Bruce Rauner is proving to be quite adept at skirting responsibility for the current Statehouse impasse and impending government shutdown.

He has relentlessly painted himself as the good guy, even to the point of blatantly abandoning his previous stances.

For instance, Rauner has righteously slammed the Democrats' "unconstitutional" unbalanced budget, even though his own proposed budget was also billions of dollars out of balance.

Rauner trashed that Democratic budget even after he signed the part that funded schools, thereby ensuring that he avoided blame if schools didn't open on time.

Rauner warned in April that the state had no money to bail out Chicago, then offered $200 million a year in "found money" for the Chicago Public Schools to keep it from going belly up.

He often refers to the state employee union AFSCME as "AFSCAMMY" and told the Chicago Tribune editorial board that the crisis of a state fiscal meltdown "creates opportunity" to get his non-budget issues passed. But last week he pledged to work arm-in-arm with the unions to make sure those poor state workers got their paychecks, even though the lack of a budget means there is no legal appropriation to do so.

He's a clever dude, that one. He'll say just about anything to shift the focus off of him and on to the Democrats.

Governor Bruce Rauner's much-anticipated TV ad isn't as over-the-top negative as many thought it would be.

"Exactly," was the response from a Rauner official I spoke with after watching the ad and making the above observation about its somewhat muted tone.

"There's plenty of time for that if it's necessary," the official added.

After five months, you'd think that the warring parties at the Illinois Statehouse would have learned something about each other. Instead, last week's bitter and divisive House overtime session showed that they still fundamentally misunderstand one another.

What follows are some questions I'm hearing and my own responses.

• From Republicans: Why would the House Democrats propose such a weak workers' compensation reform plan last week when they knew Governor Bruce Rauner wants so much more?

The Democrats' plan didn't contain much real-world progress, and actually regressed in part. Unless you read between the lines. Workers' comp insurance is essentially a no-fault system designed to keep disputes out of the courts. Republicans have for years attempted to insert "causation" into the system to weed out employees whose injuries are mostly not the fault of employers.

But House Speaker Michael Madigan's bill used the term "causal" in relation to a certain kind of injury. This was a pretty good indication that after more than 30 years as speaker, Madigan is moving away from his complete opposition to causation standards.

The speaker appears willing to deal on this topic because he attached his language to a House bill that can now be amended by the Senate. If he'd used a Senate bill, it would've been "take it or leave it."

So build on the causation issue and ignore his other items that set the negotiations back. It's not rocket science.

I spent the better part of last Wednesday asking folks around the Statehouse if they had anything positive to tell me. I went looking for anything that might indicate a silver lining to this increasingly nasty spring legislative session.

Mostly, people just laughed at me.

Other than some individual personal developments, there just wasn't much positivity around. The governor's chief of staff, Mike Zolnierowicz, and his incomparable wife Barret were about to have a new baby. They're great people and that's wonderful news, but it also means that "Z" was not going to be able to work on solving the problems for a few days.

A gaming-expansion bill appeared to be progressing. But I'm told the governor is in no mood to sign it as long as his "Turnaround Agenda" is being ignored by the majority Democrats.

The Senate Democrats, meanwhile, were expected to move legislation to help Chicago out of its horrific fiscal mess, but there's still the problem with the governor's refusal to do anything for the Democrats until he gets what he wants.

So I came up with nothing.