Obama Acknowledging Reality on GOP Cooperation?

I know he's said stuff like this before but this is what you like to hear:

“There are members of their base who think if somebody even smiles at me, they think, ‘You’re a traitor. You smiled at Obama,’” the president said at a fundraiser Tuesday night for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “The day has passed when I expected this to be a full partnership.”

There is hardly any “room for cooperation” in the Republican Party, Obama said.

At the same time, he said he understands why the GOP is “sitting on the sidelines.”

“Politically it hasn’t been bad for them,” he said — an apparent reference to the Republicans’ expected gains in the midterm congressional elections this fall.

I'm still not sure whether Obama honestly believed the Republicans would be interested in cooperating or if he was fully committed to this idea rhetorically. I happen to think Obama is smart, so I lean towards the latter, but attempts at cave- tastic bipartisanship have been such a constant in his administration that you never know.

Regardless, any change on this thinking is good, so hopefully he means what he says and will start acting accordingly.