How do they live with the cognitive dissonance?

Our local town council elections are coming soon.  The candidate statements in the Voter Information Pamphlet are so generic as to be meaningless, so I did what I always do:  I went out on the internet, looking for information.  I discovered that one of the candidates donated to Barack Obama.  With that in hand as the only information I had on her, I crossed her off my list.  I don’t need a big government person sitting on the Council of my small, somewhat indebted town.

Today, though, I had the opportunity to talk to the gal and I discovered that she’s a fiscal conservative.  I can vote for her in good conscience.  That’s great for my town, because I think she’ll win a place on the council.

What troubles me, though, is how in the world sensible people can square their core values (fiscal conservativism, equality of opportunity, etc.), with being liberals?  Only cognitive dissonance could allow a bright fiscal conservative to place her hopes in Obama, the man who is going to rewrite the whole definition of Big Government when it comes to America.