That admiration spiked the last few days when the quickest and most full-throated condemnation of Roy Moore and his Republican defenders came from Mormon Republicans. I wasn’t surprised. Because while I find their religious beliefs as extreme and strange as I do those of most American Protestants, Mormons seem more consistently virtuous and disciplined in the ways they live their lives.

In the Trump era, compared to the rest of the religious Republican base, they have walked that walk as citizens. Nationally, Trump’s share of the Mormon vote was 20 percent less than he got from white evangelical voters. In Utah, as The New York Times noted, more people voted against Donald Trump than for him in the general election.

Jeff Flake, one of five Republican U.S. senators who are Mormon, represents Arizona, the state with the fifth most Mormons. Right after Roy Moore won the Alabama Senate nomination in September, Flake was “the only Republican lawmaker to criticize Moore” according to The Washington Post—weeks before Flake announced he was leaving the Senate. Later he elaborated on his displeasure, focusing on Islamophobia, saying Moore’s “belief that a Muslim should not be a member of Congress because of his faith … was wrong.”

Last Thursday afternoon, immediately after the Post published its article about Moore’s apparent history of pedophilia, Flake said on Twitter that “he should step aside immediately.” In response to the variously grotesque defenses of Moore, Flake tweeted: “Come on, Republicans. Is this who we are? This cannot be who we are.”

The other well-known Republican politician to come out against Moore and his supporters immediately was Evan McMullin—former CIA agent and House policy aide, 2016 anti-Trump presidential candidate, Mormon. “Those backing Moore,” McMullin tweeted with a link to the Post article, “must now oppose him or bear responsibility for him.”

America’s most famous Mormon Republican, the one who declined to endorse Trump in 2016 because of his “trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny,” and who said in August that Trump’s “apologists strain to explain that he didn’t mean what we heard” concerning Charlottesville, remarks that had “caused racists to rejoice.” Mitt Romney stepped up first thing Friday morning, making superb use of Twitter’s new 280-character limit, advancing the logic of the case by batting away other Republicans’ main line of defense: “Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside.”

And on Friday as well, another Mormon Republican senator, Mike Lee of Utah, forthrightly abandoned Moore on Twitter: “Having read the detailed description of the incidents, as well as the response from Judge Moore and his campaign, I can no longer endorse his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.”