Almost three months ago, in the op-ed pages of USA Today, Randy Barnett, a libertarian law professor at Georgetown University, pleaded with Congressional Republicans to get their act together, and devise an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. The political environment in Washington hadn’t changed—Republicans were no closer to health policy consensus than they had been for any of the past five years, and President Obama no more willing to roll back his signature accomplishment. But Barnett had other objectives in mind. His goal was to “make a favorable ruling more likely” in King v. Burwell—the case before the Supreme Court Wednesday morning, which threatens to void ACA subsidies in 34 states.

“The legislative wheels must be visibly in motion by the time of oral arguments in March,” Barnett wrote.

And this week Congressional Republicans complied. Or rather they created the illusion of compliance. In synchronous op-eds that ironically reveal points of conflict as well as consensus, leading Senate and House Republicans claimed they’d step in to contain the damage if the Court rules for the plaintiffs. These editorials hint at a desire to let states waive out of the ACA into a much less regulated system. But both are silent on every crucial detail, and on the basic political fact that no such plan is likely to pass either chamber, nor win Obama’s approval. As if to underscore the pointlessness of the exercise, the House chairmen accented their column with six words that spell doom for any substantial undertaking: “Republicans have formed a working group.”

But for the purposes of communicating with the Supreme Court, they checked the box. The “legislative wheels” are “visibly in motion,” freeing Barnett to write a separate piece for the Washington Post condemning the law’s supporters for nudging the Court in the opposite direction.

As exercises in bad faith go, Barnett’s double standard is trivial, perhaps even unintentional. By contrast, the crucial elements of the King case—the political theatrics, the enlistment of plaintiffs, the historical revisions, the legal arguments themselves—are all breathtaking in their duplicity. The current challenge offends the sensibilities of its detractors more than the constitutional challenge that nearly voided the law three years ago, because the law’s opponents have enlisted such indefensible tactics. And the horrible thing about it is, they might very well succeed.