Lindsey Graham is mad and maddening. “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020,” the senator shouted at the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, when it was nominally his turn to question Brett Kavanaugh. “Boy, y’all want power,” he added. “God, I hope you never get it.”

Graham implied that his anger was compounded by the fact that he had voted for two of Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees. “When you see Sotomayor and Kagan, tell them Lindsey said hello,” he said, turning to Kavanaugh, referring to Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “Because I voted for them.” His tone marked a change in the hearing—the Republicans were beginning to speak for themselves, leaving behind the deliberate and small-bore questions of Rachel Mitchell, the sex-crimes prosecutor they’d flown in from Arizona, and mounting an incensed defense of President Trump’s nominee. “I hope that the American people will see through this charade,” Graham said, of a hearing that was supposedly designed to explore a sexual-assault allegation. There had been a debate, in the days before the hearing, about whether the proceeding should be treated more like a trial or a job interview—about how to weigh issues such as proof, character, and memory. Graham dismissed both frameworks. “This is not a job interview; this is hell,” he said. The problem was politics, Graham said. Yet what was he offering himself but politics? What new facts did he bring to the room? His anger was that of a partisan mad at others for their partisanship. He closed by saying that he intended to vote for Kavanaugh, and that he hoped the rest of his colleagues did, too.