GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer may think he has a winner with his proposal for a state constitutional amendment aimed at exempting Minnesotans from a federal or state requirement that they purchase health insurance.

And if his goal was a boost for his campaign from a spate of national exposure for the idea, just before Saturday's GOP convention straw ballot, he's already won. The three-term state representative from Delano extolled the concept this week in both the New York Times and on the Fox News TV network.

But as it applies to the current federal health reform debate, Emmer's idea is constitutionally dubious at best.

The U.S. Constitution's declaration that laws made by Congress are the supreme law of the land -- "anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding" -- stands squarely in the idea's way. So do 200 years of federal jurisprudence, notes Carleton College political scientist Steven Schier. He describes Emmer's move as "the Hail-Mary-est of Hail Mary passes" in the health reform game. "It's audacious," he said.

As it might apply to state health reform efforts, Emmer's amendment amounts to a preemptory, permanent constitutional impediment to types of health care reform proposals that have found little traction at the Legislature in recent years, but might prove desirable in the future. It would be another case of something Minnesotans have seen too much of in recent years: legislators asking the voters to use the Constitution to do their policymaking duty for them, thereby locking themselves and the state into inflexible constitutional mandates.

But any discussion of the idea is purely hypothetical, because any thought that Emmer could persuade the 2010 Legislature to put his amendment on the 2010 ballot is purely fanciful. Minnesota's DFL-controlled Legislature ignored the amendment when he introduced it last session, and is sure to do so again in 2010.

With so little prospect of genuine success, Emmer's proposal might be dismissed as one candidate's political stunt -- were it not for the risks associated with the national flames it helps fan.

We can have a constructive debate over the role of the federal government in the health care overhaul. But by proposing a blanket exemption under the Constitution Emmer and like-minded Republican legislators in about a dozen other states, -- most of them GOP strongholds -- are contributing to a revival of something history cautions Americans to avoid. They are attempting to reignite a divisive states' rights movement, grounded in mistrust of the federal government's capacity to act in the interests of the American people. If their line of reasoning takes hold in a major political party, more than federal health care policy will be affected. The legitimacy of all manner of federal action -- including education, energy, welfare, food and drug regulation and more -- would be called into question.

Emmer told Fox's national TV audience that he would welcome a revival of the states' rights movement. Republicans familiar with their party's beginnings -- and Minnesotans schooled in the Civil War story of the 1st Minnesota volunteers at Gettysburg -- should cringe at such talk.