Massive Resistance

"Mihm said today’s fight has a parallel in the nullification movement of the 1830s when John C. Calhoun, who had resigned the vice presidency to run for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina, devised a strategy to oppose a tariff that he said hit the South unfairly. If the state legislature passed a law that refuted the federal one, the state could ignore it based on what he called a 'concurrent majority.'
"President Andrew Jackson eventually interceded and thwarted the nullification movement. Had it gone forward, Mihm said, it may have led to the breakup of the Union before the Civil War.
"Now, he said, those who want to stop Obamacare 'are trying to find another way to nullify that poses a much graver threat, but not to the law,' Mihm said, referring to a possible failure to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
"'Our debt is something we all, every one of us, are on the hook for,' he said. 'And the idea that you can take that and make that a bargaining chip is very similar to the idea of the nullifiers.'"

Michael Tackett at Bloomberg compares today's Republican Party to Southern conservatives of the past.