Moderate Democrats are at the center of a game of tug-of-war between Republicans and Democratic leadership, as the GOP attempts to peel off the five remaining votes needed to back the party’s “clean” stopgap spending bill and reopen the government.

According to multiple GOP sources, individual Republican lawmakers are engaging with Senate Democrats they view as flippable in a bid to win them over. Although some members of leadership are involved, this is largely being done at the rank-and-file level, with members who have working relationships with the Democrats in question taking on the heavy lifting.

On Wednesday, what began as spur-of-the-minute talks on the Senate floor ballooned into a conversation involving up to a dozen rank-and-file lawmakers with an eye toward a possible resolut

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