Fresh off their midterm tidal wave, the Republicans now face the same dilemma as in the story line of “The Untouchables” – the 1987 classic about dealing with Al Capone in Chicago. As Sean Connery asked Kevin Costner, “What are you prepared to do?”

Republican leadership must now decide what they are prepared to do to stop a president hell-bent on taking executive action that ignores the Constitution and overturns current U.S. immigration law by granting amnesty to four million or five million illegal immigrants – a policy objective a majority of Americans reject.

By now, everyone should understand that the U.S. faces this dilemma because Barack Obama has been extended the benefit of the doubt on so many controversial actions taken during his first six years as president.

As a result, he is now emboldened to take an unprecedented action with enormous impact that leads directly to a constitutional crisis, and potentially to civil unrest.

Some might ask why is the president in such a hurry, and why can’t he just do his job as president, which is to faithfully execute the laws Congress passes and uphold the Constitution?

Perhaps the best way to understand Obama’s intent is to view this latest anticipated action in the context of the other unilateral actions he has taken in his first six years. The Obama legal record shows that he is the first president to:

• Abrogate well-established bankruptcy law to turn over control of General Motors to its unions who helped elect him.

• Issue unlawful recess-appointments at influential regulators – the National Labor Relations Board and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – while the Senate remained in session.

• Sue states for enforcing their own voter ID laws.

• Claim executive privilege to shield an attorney general held in contempt of Congress for not responding to subpoenas to turn over records pertaining to a reckless and unprecedented program known as Fast and Furious that resulted in a border patrol agent’s murder.

• Be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

• Attempt to block a major manufacturing company – Boeing – from its legal right to open a manufacturing line in a right-to-work state, South Carolina.

• Arbitrarily declare the existing law under the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and unenforceable.

• Sue states for enforcing immigration laws passed by Congress.

• Have his Environmental Protection Agency repudiated by a federal judge for illegally attempting to shut down coal operations in Appalachia.

• Bypass Congress and ram through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, aka Dream Act, by executive order.

• Authorize the release of 36,000 criminal aliens, including rapists, kidnappers, arsonists, burglars, sex offenders and 193 murderers.

What is common to all of Obama’s executive actions is that they were taken less to solve problems than to weaken the rule of law and engineer radical political change that could not be accomplished through the ballot box and congressional votes.

In fact, Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order in 2012 and the 2013 “jailbreak” release of the criminal aliens set the stage for some 60,000 unaccompanied minors to cross the southern border this year.

Obama’s actions show little respect for the compromise essential in the democratic process and two-party system, the rule of law and the constitutional constraints of the separation of powers. They are a result of his goal to “fundamentally transform the United States.”

This latest wholesale executive order could finally overwhelm our system, leading to far greater numbers of illegal immigrants flooding into the United States and a de facto broadening of the base for a one-party state – with a permanent Democratic Party majority.

Democratic Party pollster and strategist Pat Caddell said it best when he described Obama as “a raging narcissist who doesn’t care if he destroys this country, (and) this move will tear this country apart.”

So the Republican leaders in both houses better be prepared to do whatever is necessary to defend and protect the Constitution and the interests of Americans, the majority of whom just recently and clearly rejected the Obama approach to governing.

Originally published at Investor’s Business Daily.