While Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joined all his GOP senate colleagues in their tactical decision to not directly address or question Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during her testimony on Thursday—they instead hired an outside female prosecutor, Arizona Republican Rachel Mitchell, to do it for them—he evidently could not resist the temptation to drop that formulation during the afternoon questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by claiming his own time to defend the witness as a "victim" and then had "a full-blown tantrum" on the floor as he excoriating his Democratic colleagues.

"You've got nothing to apologize for," Graham said to Kavanaugh, as he then revealed where the order of his sympathies by declaring Ford, who has testified she remains "100 percent" positive that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted here, was "just as much a victim of this as I think Brett Kavanaugh."

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Graham's outburst did not go over well:

.@LindseyGrahamSC having a full-blown tantrum on the floor. Calls Kavanaugh's victims' allegations "a sham" and says Kavanaugh owes no one an apology. Graham says Kavanaugh—not the women that he assaulted—have been through hell. #BelieveSurvivors #StopKavanaugh pic.twitter.com/nPXlyUmEyO — NARAL (@NARAL) September 27, 2018 I'm staggered by Lindsay Graham's performance. He really has zero regard for women. #Kavanaugh — ilyse hogue (@ilyseh) September 27, 2018 The chasm between Lindsey Graham's sympathy for Kavanaugh and his sympathy for Christine Blasey Ford says it all. — Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) September 27, 2018

Ahead of the hearing, Republicans had argued they had hired the outside prosecutor, one who specialized in sexual assault cases, because such a topic was "complicated" and they didn't want to ask "insensitive" questions.

They had no problem asking a man about these issues, however.

After Graham ended the charade that the Republicans would not question the witnesses directly—at least the male witness—Sens. John Cornyn of Texas (R-Texas), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), and Ted Cruz (D-Texas) also followed suit.