I Married a "Crypto-Republican"

I picked today’s fractal, Ryngs, because it looked a bit like an abstraction of a pair of wedding rings. As you have no doubt seen by the title, this post involves me and my missus so the image seemed singularly apropos. Ah well--on with the rant!
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Every family has at least one shameful secret. Last week I discovered mine. Yes, I thought the love of my life was committed to “center-left” values--but no! I found out last week that I married a Crypto-Republican!
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How did I discover this, you ask? It happened like this…
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My nephew Glenn Keskey (whom I call “Glenn-Bob” for reasons unknown even to me) sent me an e-mail that provided a tool to help you select your presidential candidate. Yes, it’s very early to start thinking about who do vote for in 2008 (even though the California Primary is coming up in four months) so time marches ever onward. It’s not too early to start thinking about this: more than any election in the past 30 years, this one is particularly important.
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Check out this link to take the test. (http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460 ) You will be asked questions about your opinions on Iraq, immigration, the Republican-sponsored tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, Stem-Cell research, universal health care, abortion, the privatization of Social Security, the Line-Item Veto, alternate energy, same-sex marriage and the death penalty. You will also asked to assess the importance of each issue. When completed the computer will figure out which candidate most-closely matches your positions.
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I took the quiz and found, to my complete surprise that my candidate-of choice is Dennis Kucinich (with a score of 46), John Edwards (42) and Chris Dodd (39). Unfortunately, none of these candidates have a hope in hell of winning the Democratic Party nomination--much less the next election. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both come in at 36 and Rudy Guiliani with a score of 32. (Mitt Romney was next in line at 17.)
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Robyn took the same test and we discovered her candidate was John McCain! Of course, her match was only 32 (I assume out of a possible 100). The quiz we both took isn’t completely accurate: for example she found John McCain disagreed with her on many of the most important issues of this campaign. (I wish I’d gotten the rest of her scores but I didn’t think to do that).
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Later (10/27) Robyn re-took the test wit a lot of input from me: this time she came out with results much closer to what I had (Kucinich, Edwards and Dodd--although with much less emphasis.) Did I brow-beat her into changing her opinions or did I simply encourage her to really think about the questions rather than going with her gut instincts? I don’t know and, honestly I’m not sure Robyn really does either. I guess we’ll never really know.
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What I do know for certain is this: the 2008 Presidential election (now barely more than a year away) may well be the most important vote in my lifetime. I know a lot of voters aren’t as well-informed as they should be: they vote with their guts or are swayed by expensive advertising campaigns and don’t take the time to think what that vote means to them and the country.
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The President can’t make a lot of changes on his own--even if his party controls congress. However, the next President may be asked to appoint as many as five Supreme Court Justices. Right now the court is almost equally divided between “conservatives” and “moderates”. Continuing this would pretty much leave in tact a lot of laws we have been dealing with for thirty or more years. A shift to conservative Justices would dismantle a lot of laws we’ve been living with for thirty years or more--chief among them Roe-v-Wade. These decisions will affect us all directly so participating in the voting process is important.
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For all of our sakes I hope you make the right decision.