About 42 percent of the people who say they disapprove of health reform think that public officials “should do what they can to make the law fail,” while a narrow majority — 51 percent — actually believes that lawmakers should do what they can to make Obamacare work.

And that’s just among the people who don’t like Obamacare to begin with. When put into context of the general population, researchers found that amounts to just 23 percent of Americans who want to undermine the health law to make it fail.

Even when the results are broken down by party lines, there isn’t necessarily widespread GOP support for sabotaging Obamacare. About 85 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they don’t like the law, but just 43 percent of that group actually want their lawmakers to work to make it fail. On the other hand, 37 percent think the law’s opponents should try to make it work as best as possible.

The Pew/USA Today poll does find one pocket of broad support for undermining Obamacare, however: Tea Party Republicans. A big contrast emerges between those far-right conservatives and more mainstream GOP voters. Sixty four percent of Tea Partiers who oppose the law want elected officials to try to make it fail — an approach that’s favored by just 31 percent of the Republican voters who say they don’t align themselves with the Tea Party.

If the House GOP members dig in and push a government shutdown they’ll be forever fucked. It’s already an unpopular idea within their own party and that’s now, while it’s still purely hypothetical. There’s no way in hell that the press is going to be able to spin this as Obama’s failure, too many House members and Tea Party politicians have gone on record demanding a shutdown in explicit terms.