This past Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham followed up his blistering takedown of Democrats on the Judiciary Committee with another stalwart defense of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

This time, Graham took on the assertions that Kavanaugh’s impassioned self-defense against thus-far-uncorroborated sexual misconduct allegations showed he didn’t have the proper judicial temperament.

“The temperament I saw was a man who was innocent — who was rightly offended by being destroyed for a political purpose,” Graham told host George Stephanopoulos. “This is not going to be the future of the nomination process in the committee, where you accuse a guy of being a gang rapist, an alcoholic, bumbling, stumbling sexual predator, and you get upset when he forcefully fights back against liberal smears.”

Graham further dismissed the attack on Kavanaugh’s temperament, saying, “Now, let’s disqualify him now because the way he behaved in the hearing. I would never do that, because you’re rewarding people who are using the most despicable tactics I have ever seen in politics. I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as I do right now. Republicans across the board—country club, Tea Party—believe this was way over the top.”

Graham felt that, as much as Ford had been treated respectfully by the Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh had been treated like “crap”.

Graham also told Stephanopoulos that he would call for an investigation into how the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee dealt with Dr. Christine Ford’s allegations. The most controversial moves thus far have been California Senator Diane Feinstein’s withholding of Ford’s July 31 letter to her, whether Democrats suggested Ford hire the anti-Trump activist attorney Debra Katz, and if the politicians leaked a letter of Ford’s account.

Graham told Stephanopolous, “We’re going to do a wholesale, full-scale investigation of what I think was a despicable process to deter it from happening again.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Graham upped the ante. He suggested to President Trump that, should the confirmation fail, that the President actually re-nominate Kavanaugh. “If his nomination were to fall short, I would encourage President Trump to re-nominate Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. It would – in effect – be appealing the Senate’s verdict directly to the American people.”

Graham’s idea is that enough Americans would be outraged by not confirming Kavanaugh, and by Democrat behavior, that they would vote in even more Republicans to the Senate, thereby clinching a confirmation. This would be a riskier strategy than nominating another justice, such as Amy Coney Barrett.

Graham told Stephanopolous that, unless there were a major negative revelation in the FBI’s supplemental investigation, that he would vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

Meanwhile, a former boyfriend of Ford sent a sworn statement – written under penalty of felony – that appears to contradict her testimony regarding polygraphs. She had testified under oath to prosecutor Rachel Mitchell that she had “never” given tips or advice to anyone who was looking to take a polygraph test.

The letter, however, said that Ford had helped someone prepare for an FBI job interview by explaining in detail how polygraphs worked. He also said she never mentioned Brett Kavanaugh in the six years they were together, or that she’d ever been a victim of sexual assault. He also contradicted her testimony about being afraid to fly.