I believe that House Speaker John Boehner stepped in it (as he is wont to do) when after the election he said, “Obamacare is the law of the land.”

Speaker Boehner

It appears the Speaker has forgotten that the law is unconstitutional, unfunded, and unsustainable. But if the House Republicans follow his lead and give up on permanent repeal, there is still a way to stop this nightmare. If the Republic is to return to a path of sustainability, Obamacare has to go, and over the past week, the demand for Republican Governors to take the lead is picking up steam.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley has added his state to the list of states who have flat out said that they will not be implementing the Obamacare exchanges or expanding Medicaid. Alabama joins Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Alaska, Virginia, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming in telling the administration to go pound sand on their exchanges.

Governor Bentley

The point to make about Boehner’s pre-emptive surrender on Obamacare is that while he is conceding the point, we the people are not. Republicans need to remember that we elected them to stop Obama, or at the very least, put the brakes on his agenda since we don’t have the Senate. We are all aware of the unconstitutionality of Obamacare, plus the fact that the CBO has said that Obamacare will cost anywhere from two to three times what we were told it would cost (based on what day you ask them).

According to Michael Cannon writing at National Review, there is a new problem not yet brought to the floor. Operating an Obamacare exchange would be illegal in 14 states because they have either a constitutional provision, a statute, or both, outlawing state employees to participate in an essential exchange function: implementing Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates. So, on top of the added expenses, the unpopularity, and everything else we know about Obamacare, implementing it in various states would violate those states’ laws.

There is also the 10th Amendment to think of–when this country was founded, the states were supposed to be the stop gap that put the brakes on a rogue federal government. When the Supreme Court fails to strike down an unconstitutional law, the states are to step in and do that work for them. This is nullification, which I wrote about previously (see here). We conservatives have to stand with conservative governors who have courageously taken a step towards federalism, and prod the ones who have yet to take the plunge.

The states with Republican governors who haven’t announced a decision yet are New Jersey, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Michigan, Idaho, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

If you live in one of these states, you need to call your governor’s office or the attorney general and tell them that you will not comply with Obamacare. Tell them you want them to stand up with the mandate they were given by their citizens to hold the line and stand for constitutional government.

If enough of the states refuse to play ball on this, then Obamacare will end up collapsing on itself because there is no penalty for not setting up the exchanges, so the feds can’t force it on the states. As various other parts of the bill will be moving their way up to the Supreme Courts for challenge, we have to keep the heat up so that this bill will implode and we can be one step closer to true reform.

Just because we’re stuck with Obama for four more years doesn’t mean we are obligated to participate in his brazen attempts to kill the Republic. We don’t have to participate in the demise of the nation; as a matter of fact, we have a moral obligation to fight back. So let’s take the fight to Obama in a way that Boehner and the GOP House leadership have shown they are not willing to do.

It won’t be easy, but if George Washington wasn’t ready to give up, neither should we.