My mom says she would never vote for a Republican, because "Republicans hate people." I am a quasi-Republican, but I love my mom -- and I was a bit concerned by her theory. Was I in danger of becoming yet another soulless misanthrope cog in the GOP humanity-hating machine? So I decided to test it with empirical data gathered through Google.

First, I enumerated a list of political names (and nicknames) and divided them into a rightwing group and a leftwing group.

Rightwing names:
Bush, George Bush, George W. Bush G. W. Bush, Dubya, Shrub, Cheney, Dick Cheney, Ashcroft, John Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Donald Rumsfeld, Republicans, the Republican Party, the GOP, (the) Repugs, Rupuglicans, Repugnicans

Leftwing names:
Clinton, Bill Clinton, Slick Willie, Slick Willy, Hillary (not Duff), Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John F. Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Janet Reno, Gore, Al Gore, John Edwards, (the) Dems, Democrats, the Democrat(ic) Party, Democraps, Demorats

Next, I did two exact-phrase Google searches on each name, preceded by either "I love" or "I hate." For each "I love leftwing name" result, I awarded one leftwing love point; for each "I hate rightwing name" I gave one leftwing hate point. Opposite scoring for rightwingers.

Rightwing results: 3415 love points, 2053 hate points (62.5% love)

Leftwing results: 1733 love points, 12,030 hate points (12.6% love)

I’m not sure the data entirely convinced Mom, because she kicked me in the nuts when I showed them to her.