I have to confess that at the time I was on their side, although I never did any campaign work for McG.
As I recall, the hatred (for Nixon and primarily VietNam) was there, and it was vivid, but it never reached anywhere near the utterly depraved depths of vileness we see in these current attacks on SP. Of course, the tool(s) of the internet and Photoshopping and blogs and unattributed sources a go-go etc; didn’t exist back then.
They do this stuff because they don’t have machine guns and shock troops to mow us down...yet. But if they have their way and Obama gets elected...