Barack Obama may pay lip service to working with Republicans, but we know he’ll ultimately attempt to ramrod policies he hopes will transform America, but which actually damage her. Mr. Obama came to America with a chip on his shoulder and that splinter remains despite Americans twice electing him. A man with a gracious and forgiving nature would have been moved by this outpouring; yet, despite all this, he seems unable to shed himself of his anti-Americanism, revealing a lack of charitable character.

So, how will Americans protect themselves from his arbitrary executive orders that undoubtedly fall beyond his Constitutional limits? How will we be saved from orders of a fascist nature rarely seen before in American history, such as wholesale amnesty, treaties designed to help Iran manufacture the nuclear bombs that will one day be used against us, or his tying the hands of law enforcement trying to stop domestic jihadism? Congress can impeach, but they probably won’t. They can turn off the monetary spigot, but that’s no guarantee of stopping Obama… after all, money is fungible.

One of the surprise outcomes of the blowout election were the governorships won by Republicans, often in Democratic states. Be it ObamaCare,  protecting state borders, minimizing illegals, guaranteeing free speech, religious  and business rights, outlawing shariah law, or standing by law enforcement, governors and state legislatures have the ability to tell Obama and the Feds: not in my backyard.

The one thing separating the rights and safety of citizens within a state from the indignities and transformational edicts of Mr. Obama and his attorney general are the state governors. Governors are the firewall between citizens and a lording Obama. Indeed, the Founders wished it that way, giving states and local officials greater say in the lives of citizens within state jurisdiction. It is a Constitutional imperative. That is what state’s rights -- our rights-- are all about .These rights safeguard us from the tyrannical man the Founders feared in a Mr. Obama.

There can be no doubt that is what Americans had in mind when electing not simply a Senate majority opposed to Mr. Obama  but a cast of Republican governors who will stand against the Obama overreach into our personal lives. This realization began percolating when the governors decided to override Obama’s loose and cavalier Ebola policies that seemed indifferent to the risk of citizens within respective states. The American people, like never before, understood that a president who is eager to sacrifice their health and well-being , and that of their children, on the altar of international do-gooding had to be stopped. The governors stepped up regarding Ebola and hopefully, the people believe, they will do it against those with diseases being imported by Obama from Mexico; jihadists roaming the streets because of Obama policies forbidding law enforcement from profiling likely and would-be terrorists; the imposition of Common Core against the wishes of school boards, and health insurance policies good for Obama‘s redistribution schemes but bad for regular Americans.

In the month leading up to the election, Americans were stunned by Mr. Obama’s indifference to their well-founded fears about Ebola and other diseases entering the country. It became apparent that Mr. Obama’s mission to help Africa relegated Americans to a second-class interest, as if we are but guinea pigs expected to waive our own needs for the sake of those who hold Mr. Obama’s heart. Furthermore, every time an American was beheaded by ISIS or in Oklahoma City, New York City, or killed at Fort Hood the only response we basically got from Barack Obama was “Islam is a religion of peace and not responsible for anything done in its name”. There seemed no empathy for Americans, their fears and pain. He seemed utterly indifferent, outside and above it all. He became the “I-don’t-feel-your- pain President”.

There is something cruel in Obama’s indifference, an emotional sneer directed at middle-class America. Thus, the need for governors to protect our vital interests against a president unwilling to protect us, one who’d rather, like Elmer Gantry,  convince us that his interests are paramount and should become ours, a man who smugly reduces mothers and fathers to being simply  Islamopohbic, racist, or ”unscientific”. Obama’s indifference is no longer cool but creepy. And so is his untruth telling.

A president’s power is not innate to him; it consists only in what the Constitution grants him. Beyond those limits it becomes dictatorial, a characteristic somewhat pronounced in Mr. Obama’s political outlook and personal assessment of himself as a grandiose persona beyond constitutional constraints. Constitutions were not written for him, he reasons, rather for other men.

His demeanor and attitude post-election appear to be one of: ’America, you’ll pay for rejecting me and my candidates’. America has never witnessed a president so (yes, that’s it) so un-American! 

One hopes that people in the enforcement business understand that they don’t have to enforce those things that are beyond a Constitutional allowance. Defying brazen, unchecked power is heroic… and heroism can be contagious. One hopes that not only will governors do their duty and protect the rights of their citizens from a ruthless and insensitive president, but that the spirit of defiance prevail among patriotic, freedom-loving members in government service.

Someone needs to start the pushback by declaring we are here to serve the people and the Constitution and not the political whims and agenda of he who disrespects the Constitution and the American people.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero, a theologian, is author of Push Back and president of Caucus for America.