Politico: 5 ways to kill Obamacare without repeal.

And they're all bad ideas. Even if it's your goal in life to stop Obamacare, repeal is a much better, if more difficult option, as I'll explain later.

First a few ideas Politico reminds us of:

2. Starve the federal exchanges

This one would take some help from Congress. But if Republicans find a way to stop funding the federal exchanges, a Romney administration would be under no obligation to come up with the funds...

5. Do nothing

If Romney’s really determined to block the law, he might not actually need to do anything too clever — he could do a lot by simply doing nothing at all.

He could stop the writing of the remaining rules to implement the law, stop Medicare from moving ahead with programs to find new ways to pay providers, stop the IRS from enforcing the individual mandate and even stop Medicaid officials from facilitating the expansion of the program in the states that want it.

Now this will stop, or at least significantly hinder the functioning of Obamacare, but one or all of these strategies would be more harmful to a Romney administration than out-right repeal.

Why? Uncertainty. It's hard for businesses to plan if they don't know what the law is or will be, and how it will be enforced. Uncertainty = less hiring.

It's messy. You can imagine the White House press secretary spinning wild tales of how things are perfect, "We have Obamacare de jure, just not de facto." And the Democrats' response would be something along the lines of, "the president is not faithfully executing the duties of office..." Most Americans tend not to like messy politics.

The five ways Politico pointed out might work in tandem with a repeal effort on the front burner, otherwise it's a recipe for electoral failure. And without repeal, any future president and congress could begin to fund and enforce it.