There's a prevailing stereotype of Conservatives as angry all the time, and a tendency to be judgmental can look a lot like hate when the judgment is expressed with anger. The hate part might be open to interpretation, but I think the constant anger is indisputable. The prevailing rhetoric is angry, and I wouldn't assume it's just a pose.

In polite society we often try to head off offense with expressions of symmetry--whatever fault might be revealed in you, I'd confess to the same fault, we're all equal, nobody feels bad. We do that a lot in politics, claiming that both sides are pretty much the same but simply of opposite polarity. But too much of that obscures the truth and gets in the way of honest discussion. I don't think it's out of line to observe that Conservatives are generally angrier than Liberals...on average and on balance, because I know that there are quite a few angry Leftists in the world too. So, my answer to your ponderation "Perhaps us Conservatives have earned this hate…I don’t know." would be yes, but not so much for the grand issues or glaring personal faults, but simply because it's human nature to respond to hate (or the perception of hate) with more hate.

This cycle of hate is as difficult to end as an arms race. It's not unfair to observe that we got to this point through the deliberate escalation of hateful rhetoric by the Right over the last dozen years. It's produced tangible results for the GOP at the polls, and they'll be reluctant to abandon it without a fight. A lot of Leftists look at the situation and conclude that, therefore, responding with more hate is the answer, and perhaps politicians on the Left envy their colleagues on the Right the power of their negative rhetoric and try to copy it.

I don't agree with that approach; I view hate as failure. I'm not a Pollyanna about the prospects for calming things down, especially not unilaterally--arms race logic again--but I think the alternative of just ratcheting up the anger and hatred is much, much, worse. We've gotta talk ourselves down from the ledge. That's what I'm up to these days.