linnposts.com

Ninety percent of American voters say it is important that a president be a good role model for children, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll whose results were released on January 25.

That same poll found that by a margin of 67 to 29 percent, American voters believe Donald Trump falls short in this regard, across every party, gender, education, age and racial group.

But get this…by a margin of 72 to 22 percent, Republican voters say Trump is a good role model for children.

I thought these figures couldn’t be right when I first read them in an article about the survey so I went to the Quinnipiac Polling Institute to read the data for myself.

No mistake…72% of Republicans believe Donald Trump is a good role model for children.

I was stunned. I had a difficult time taking in these results. What could these Republicans be thinking? Were they thinking? What accounts for these results?

Those questions swirled in my head for several days until I began to write down the possible explanations for these polling results.

#1: The question was asked in a way that skewed the results.

How survey questions are framed can influence the results, but in this instance the question Quinnipiac asked was as straight forward as it gets: “Do you think that President Trump is a good role model for children, or not?” Not much wiggle room there.

#2: Evangelicals account for the percentage being as large as it is.

No doubt they pushed the percentage higher because they are the largest Republican constituency today. Yet, not all Republicans are evangelical, not even a majority, so this doesn’t explain the poll results.

#3: Republicans hate Democrats and liberals so much that they support Trump no matter what.

I am beginning to believe this is true for a lot of Republicans. They believe liberals have ruined the country and control the Democratic Party so any Republican is better than any Democrat. But that doesn’t justify their belief that Trump is a good role model for children.

I would never say that Bill Clinton is a good role model for children, even though I agree with him on a lot of issues. Surely Republicans can separate political views from moral character.

#4: They were not serious.

This one is undercut by the fact that they gave answers to several other questions in the poll that were consistent with the answers other groups gave, suggesting they also gave a serious answer to this one.

#5: They believe any and all bad news about Trump is nothing more than a vendetta perpetrated by “fake news.”

The poll was taken a week after the news broke about Trump’s sexual tryst with the prostitute, Stormy Daniels, soon after his son, Barron, was born. This means Republicans would have to believe the $130,000 payoff to her was made up and never happened, as well as believing the numerous recorded statements he has made that showed poor moral character were doctored. If they do think this way, God save us from the Republican Party.

#6: They just don’t care what Trump does as long as his political decisions are consistent with their own views.

This one makes more sense than the one before it, but until someone makes a credible case for Trump’s moral character being better than what we know about him at the moment, you have to wonder about the moral character of that 72% of Republicans.

#7: They really do believe he is a good model for children.

After thinking about all the other possibilities, I have concluded that this one is the most likely reason for the survey results, which makes me sad and angry at the same time. I simply cannot imagine what justification there could be for believing Trump is a role model for kids.

Which makes me wonder how the 22% of Republicans who said they do not believe he is feel about their party now that this poll has been published.

The whole thing makes me kind of sick at the stomach. The only antidote for that feeling is to continue to believe that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

And if it does, then surely many Republicans among that 72% will live long enough to face their children, and certainly their grandchildren, when they confront them with the question, “What could you have possibly been thinking?”