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Sure, and I've heard leftists lament about the days of reasonable conservatives or how workers in Kansas have allowed the GOP to make them degenerate politically ("how can vote against their interests like this?" is the general tone)
Who here thinks the Left doesn't loathe conservatives because of that?
The GOP is on the outs in college and media. Of course they would mourn losing their position and of course they would prefer to regain it with minimal sacrifice. Doesn't mean hate hasn't flourished. Quite the opposite: that's precisely the issue.
I'm sure the Left would say this too. Especially since I think they trend towards rejecting direct aggression and tit-for-tat as a value more than conservatives (while finding ways to rationalize doing it)
Everybody has a theory about how the other side drew first blood and they really didn't want to do this and they want to go back to when everyone got along but they were forced to be this way their opponents.
It's not of much concern to me today, because partisans will either line up with the more hate-filled, malicious comrades or they will be those comrades. So the polarization and the Culture War will continue, no matter what self-serving tales each side spins as they strike the other.
There's an enormous difference between a party wanting to fix an ostensibly-neutral institution (nicely or otherwise), and a party wanting to fix their opponent. That is, the GOP wanting to fix colleges is not paralleled by the Democrats wanting to fix the GOP. (And I suspect the Democrats mostly want to fix the GOP in the sense that you fix a pet)
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I don't even know what a "nicely fixed" GOP would look like to Democrats. They certainly didn't think John McCain or Mitt Romney were anything but racist sexists when they were running for president.
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