How many elected politicians do you think have vastly different private views?

[Nichlemn]

I wonder if there's say, a Democrat Representative with a very liberal voting record whose sincere views are actually that of a very conservative Republican (or vice versa), but they adopted a diametrically opposed policy platform simply because it is the only way for them to be elected in their home region. If they've covered up their tracks from the beginning, it'd be hard to pin down exactly who they are, but do you think any exist?

Rand Paul strikes me as someone whose views are probably much like his father's privately, but he's adopted views that are more mainstream Republican for electability reasons. Not quite the diametrically opposed politician I'm thinking of, though.

I also wonder what Barack Obama's private views are. If he had the power to convince everybody to agree with him, what does he do differently as President?

[Nichlemn]

I suspect most pollies are to the left of how they act, they just play more conservative as that is the way the wind is seen to blow.

It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of Pubbies are actually at least socially liberal (well the more educated ones), they just play up their social conservatism to suck up to the base.

On a similar note, I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of populist Democrats are actually more "market-orientated" (not necessarily right-wing or libertarian, but like economist-wonkish) than they present themselves. The first example that springs to mind is when Hillary Clinton supported a "gas tax holiday" back in 2008 when basically zero economists did. I suspect she privately didn't support it, but her advisers told her that it polled well.