There’s a tendency in politics to mistake personal animosity for ideological animosity.
Consider Bill Clinton. His staggering dishonesty, tackiness, and scorn for the rule of law aroused a lot of anger from the Right. But he wasn’t really that left-wing.
Oh, he was certainly more liberal in his heart than he let on, but he also worked from the assumption that this was a center-right country, and that limited what he could get away with.
Clinton ran for president the first time by “triangulating” against the base of his own party. He took time off from the campaign to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a man so mentally disabled, when he left for the electric chair, he told the guards that he was saving the pecan pie from his last meal “for later.” Clinton signed welfare reform (reluctantly), the Defense of Marriage Act (less reluctantly), helped to balance the budget, and proclaimed that “the era of big government is over.”
And yet, many conservatives insisted he was a no-good hippy left-winger.