While I don't have any substantive facts for this statement, let me pose it then as a question: Out of every 100 voters who voted for the stain in the last election, how many voted for the stain due to his liberal, islamic, socialist blackness....and how many voted for the stain out of a viceral hatred of GW Bush and anyone like him?
How many times have we all read words to the effect of "I'd vote for anyone other than candidate X" or "I'll hold my nose and vote for candidate X rather than the other candidate."??
Hatred is a very powerful and long lasting reason to vote in a certain way. If we can use it....we most certainly should.
I'm sure it was alot, but it wouldn't have been enough, if it had been enough, John Kerry would have won in 2004.....That said, the stain had developed a weird bizarre cult of personality that was freakish in its intensity. I remember a reporter, who considered himself a independent moderate (he wasn't) who stated that "those on the left consider him the messiah, and those on the right consider him a socialist, the truth is somewhere in between"......The fact that there were people who seriously thought that Obama was anything like a messiah, or even half way to the messiah, always alarmed me, and still is frightening......In almost all dictatorships, cult of personality, is a hallmark.
Hate is powerful but it isn't enough, hence why Bush Sr and Bob Dole wound up losing to Clinton, and why Gore and Kerry lost to Bush....You need, at the presidential level more then just pure hatred, you need some kind of "love".