(CNN) When Sen. Lindsey Graham's time came to ask questions of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday, Republicans were on the verge of outright panic.

Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were both teenagers, had delivered a stirring account of that night in 1982. She had come across as credible and sympathetic -- a woman who had clearly been traumatized and who had zero doubt that Kavanaugh was responsible for it.

Rachel Mitchell, the independent prosecutor brought in by Senate Republicans to question Ford and Kavanaugh, had failed to poke any significant holes in the accuser's story and seemed to have flummoxed the judge with queries about how many beers he believed to be too many beers to drink.

Enter Graham. Unlike his Republican colleagues before him, Graham, a former member of the Air Force's Judge Advocate General corps, didn't cede his five minutes of questioning to Mitchell. He seized it -- and with an impassioned attack that displayed his clear anger, frustration and impatience with both the process and the Democrats sharing the dais with him, he gave Republicans from the White House on down a shock to the system -- a wake-up call that fundamentally altered the remainder of the Kavanaugh hearing.

"What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020," Graham angrily accused his Democratic colleagues. "To my Republican colleagues, if you vote 'no', you're legitimizing the most despicable thing that I have seen in my time in politics."

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