Last December, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell met with Kentuckians to discuss the EPA’s future regulations of greenhouse gases. He promised to return to Washington and tell regulators “firsthand how this War on Coal is hurting Kentucky miners and their families.”

On Monday, the EPA released those feared rules and McConnell followed through on his promise. “The point of this whole exercise is sadly obvious: it’s not really about science or global warming at all, it’s about making privileged elitists — elitists who may not feel the pinch of a higher utility bill or the pain of a lost job — feel like they ‘did something,'” he said. Nearly every Republican press release echoed McConnell’s words. But a funny thing happens when you take a closer look at those arguments: they quickly fall apart.

What’s more, Republicans had months to develop their position. It was a year ago that Obama instructed the agency to release a proposal in June 2014. Three weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that the release date would be June 2. Even the design of the rules was not much of a secret: The administration used a proposal from the NRDC as a template and the new rules even leaked over the weekend. In other words, Republican had ample time to prepare their arguments.

Yet, their three arguments against the new regulations only prove the weakness of their position. In those five months between McConnell meeting his constituents and Monday, Republicans were unable to devise a single, credible argument against the new rules. Here is what they came up with:

The rules will drive up costs for consumers.

Republicans relied upon a Chamber of Commerce report released last week that found that the regulations would cost consumers $17 billion a year. As Jonathan Chait noted, the estimate included wild assumptions that drastically overstate the costs, particularly because the actual rules are slightly more lenient than expected. Even so, the Chamber’s estimate wasn’t that dire: an extra $100 in energy costs per year for consumers and 224,000 fewer jobs. As Chait concluded, “what the Chamber is actually demonstrating, in its attempts to frighten us, is that we hardly have anything to fear.”