The slight rumble which you may have heard on Wednesday evening during the Republican Presidential debate was former governor and U.S. Senator John Chafee, former Secretary of State Susan Farmer, former Minority Leader Lila Sapinsley, and my father, former Providence Alderman Henry “Mickey” Violet, rolling over in their respective graves.

What occasioned this nether world event was the six out of eight presidential candidates voicing their support for a convicted felon to serve as the nation’s top executive. Mind you, none of them modified their position to say that these indictments were just at the allegation stage and unproven. They were just asked point blank by the Trump network, I mean Fox network hosts, if they would support him if he were elected.

To think that the wimps up on that stage would bow in obeisance to someone convicted by a jury of violating that same Constitution he’d be swearing to uphold, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government for the corrupt purpose of holding onto power is beyond imagination as to the depths to which the national Republicans have sunk.

Their answer was testimony to the damage that Mr. Trump has inflicted on his own party. He has been making the argument that the nation’s criminal justice system is corrupt. To have them join in to this attack is a flashcard that the justice system is being undermined by Republicans.

Apparently these Republicans think indictments returned by 3 separate grand jury (plus a fourth in New York) are all citizens in three separate jurisdictions who have been putty in the hands of those prosecutors. In effect, these wanna-be “leaders” of our nation have dissed its very foundation as a country based on a rule of law.

Their moral cowardness in not calling out these actions if they prove true in a court of law is a disqualification for them to hold the office. If they believe that they should support him if convicted, then they are incapable of sorting out right from wrong so should be shown the door. If they raised their hands out of political expediency, their self-serving agenda should prevent them from representing this country since it is all about them.

Mr. Trump‘s 91 charges are not rooted in civil disobedience or crimes of conscience. They are rooted in grave felonies that tried to move this country into a banana republic where those in power stayed in power by manipulating the voting system and precipitated a riot. He is no martyr for a good cause, if convicted.

It is despairing for moderate republicans to see this spectacle where would-be candidates don’t have the intestinal fortitude to tell their own party the full truth that Mr. Trump continues to lie about the election outcome and then baptizes the former president’s attack on the integrity of the justice system.

Fortunately, candidates Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson did the right thing by eschewing any support until all the evidence is in. For that, they were roundly booed, thereby proving the viewer just how fallen the Republican Party has tumbled.

As children learn about the fealty expressed by the presidential contenders, I wonder if their Republican parents will or won’t lionize the man in the mug shot.

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.