A Republican over Hillary?

Go here to find out with which candidate for President you have the most values in common. There are only eleven questions, so the quiz is far from comprehensive. And there were a couple of questions for which I had two viable answers and one question for which I didn't want to choose any of the available answers. So, I'm not putting a lot of stock into the whole thing and what it means.

And yet...

I found it not at all surprising that my values are most in line with Dennis Kucinich and second most with Mike Gravel. I always seem to gravitate toward the lefty nutjobs who can be politically honest because they have very little to lose for it. What I found most interesting was that the candidate with whom my values are third most consistent was a Republican.

What the effing aytch?

Now, Mike Huckabee is pretty decent for a Republican, but let's get serious, folks. Ain't no way he's better than all but two of the Democrats.

So I tried a little experiment. I went back and took the quiz again and changed the answer to one of the questions for which I was trying to decide between a couple of the available options (mandatory caps on carbon emissions versus investing in alternative energy sources - they both seem important to me). The new results put Bill Richardson as my number three.

And then I tried it again, changing back to my original answer on that question but changing my answer on one of the other tricky ones (does it really matter to me if the candidate has been a governor versus a senator or a representative? Not really). This time Barack Obama popped up as my number three.

And that is comforting to me. It was really messing with a core part of my identity to find myself with a Republican in my top three. So I was pleased that I shared NO values with Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, or Fred Thompson. Because they're pretty big tools.

But here's what's most distressing to me after taking the quiz three times. No matter how I changed my answers around, Hillary Clinton never shared more than three values with me*. Out of eleven. Now, I'm no math wiz, but that's pretty bad.

'Cause I really, really, really want to be able to vote my values in every election, but I also understand how important it is to keep Republicans out of office in this next election, which makes me more likely to support whoever ends up being the Democratic candidate. And at this point it's looking like Hillary just may be that candidate. In addition to feeling distressed that I may have so little in common, value-wise, with the next President, I feel a little distressed that I have so little in common with Hillary. Because, for whatever reason, I keep wanting to like her. I want to be able to root for the first viable female candidate for the highest office in the country. No matter how much she disappoints me, I remain unwilling to kick her to the curb. Kinda like I was with her husband back before my feminist sensibilities were so defined. What is that all about, anyway? I keep trying to convince myself that she really doesn't believe the things she says but insists on saying them so she'll get elected, at which point she'll turn into the socialist feminist superhero I deserve to have as my President.

Anyone think that's likely?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Anyway, go take the quiz and see who you'd vote for if you were voting strictly on your eleven values.


*In case you're curious about my breakdown, here it is based on my last attempt (out of a possible score of 11):
Kucinich (11)
Gravel (7)
Obama (4)
Richardson, Edwards, Dodd, and Paul (3)
Clinton, Biden, Guiliani, Huckabee, and Brownback (2)
Romney and McCain (1)
Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo, and Thompson (0)