Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, is slamming the door shut on Obamacare. On Tuesday, the Republican issued an executive order directing state agencies to reject discretionary funds related to the health-care law passed by Congress earlier this year. It is a move, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports, that could block the state from being ladled more than $1 billion by the federal government.

Pawlenty, in a phone interview, says the decision was easy. “Obamacare is one of the most misguided pieces of legislation in the modern history of the country,” he says. “All of us need to do everything we can to stop it, delay it, and limit it in any way that we can.” States, he adds, have the right to direct their own health-care policy, free of directives from Washington.

“[Democrats] have bloated a broken system,” Pawlenty tells us. “They have not done anything to contain costs. They have ignored market forces and individual responsibility. Instead, they created a governmental monstrosity.”

Looking ahead toward 2012, Pawlenty predicts that health care “will remain a significant issue — really an icon of the misguided, government-centric, top-down approaches offered by the Obama administration.”

“Regardless of its momentum as a political issue, it is just fundamentally a bad idea that needs to be confronted, defeated, and repealed,” Pawlenty says. When asked whether his anti-Obamacare message is resonating on the trail — he’s recently traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire—the governor is a bit coy. “I’m not sure if it is or not,” he says, declining to speculate much on a possible run. “But I know it is the right thing to do, so let the chips fall where they may.”