The discovery that several, and perhaps all, of the plaintiffs asking the Supreme Court to void Affordable Care Act subsidies in 34 states don’t have standing to sue the government may not ultimately suffice to see the case dismissed. But it has served the nearly-as-important purpose of alerting the press to the stakes, brazenness, and ethically dubious nature of the challenge. And, perhaps, to the fact that the case leans for support not on a clear historical record, or broad expert consensus, but on the kinds of cliched signifiers you might expect to hear on a Fox News Obamacare panel.

For instance, to combat the impression that the plaintiffs' standing problems stem from a legal argument that only appeals to unreliable kooks and zealots, one of the King architects now lays these difficulties at the feet of the IRS. "They don't want to get audited," Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon told USA Today, "and this administration has a history of using the IRS for ideological purposes."

Cannon’s claim, though baseless, is aimed at the right’s collective lizard brain, designed to excuse the case’s public relations problems—which are inherent—as a consequence of the Obama administration’s political thuggery.

That Cannon is defending his case by nodding like a Fox News bobblehead to an unrelated pseudo scandal is not anomalous. In both the media and in their briefs to the Supreme Court, the law’s challengers have papered over weaknesses in their historical and legal arguments with conservative bromides familiar to talk radio consumers, Fox News viewers, and recipients of anti-Obamacare talking points.

This kind of conservative argumentum ad reptilis, has a successful track record with at least one conservative justice on the Supreme Court. During oral arguments in the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act three years ago, Antonin Scalia made reference sua sponte to the “Cornhusker Kickback”—a short-lived special deal for Nebraska in the Senate health care bill that became a metaphor on Fox News for the ACA’s corrupted legislative process, and was thus made national.