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"The right" hates her because she’s on the other side. Each side hates the other side, equally from what I observe. That’s politics, folks – hating the other side. Useful for political purposes, and like many things we should be ashamed of, quite fun.
Everybody on the other side (and a large portion of your own side) is hatable if you emphasize certain aspects of his or her personality. The right focuses on Hillary-the-feminazi, Hillary-the-socialist, Hillary-the-bossy-scold, and Hillary-the-scheming-opportunist. Sometimes all of these at once, sometimes one or the other. Sometimes Hillary does something that seems to confirm one of these archetypes but disprove another; then the one that doesn’t fit is simply ignored. Just about everything she does fits at least one like a glove, and her enemies are off and running with the correct condemnation. The criticism sticks because there is a grain or more of truth, and because these character traits are inherently intensely annoying.
There’s a well-established lexicon of Hillary-hating, and it’s easy to pick and choose the applicable terminology. This is true of every prominent political figure and most famous people in general. John Edwards, for instance, is, among other things, the "Breck girl." Every hair-related thing that he does will be fodder for those on the other side, which you think he would have figured out by now. If he gets ridiculed for $400 haircuts, it’s not a sign that his enemies are pathological. It’s just the way Edwards-hating works. Obviously the Bush and Cheney-hating lexicons are particularly rich, they having been at the apex of power so long. Hate has so many fascinating variants and manifestations: there are very different and specific forms of hatred directed at, off the top of my head, Oprah Winfrey, Ann Coulter, Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton and Clarence Thomas.
The ritualistic phrases employed by each side to demonize the other do involve thought, but the thinking happened long ago, by other people. This letters page exhibits a related phenomenon – Hillary-hating-hating (the right hates her because they’re irrational or because she’s a winner). Perhaps Hillary is following a subtle strategy: By triggering hatred in the right, she’s signaling her worth to the right-haters. Enemy of my enemy and all that.
