It is impossible to hate or despise an honorable man, even if you disagree with him about most everything. That is what Bob Dole was. Throughout his career in the Senate he tried to reach across the aisle, unlike so many politicians today: "In politics honorable compromise is no sin. It is what protects us from absolutism and intolerance.”
In his own party Bob Dole often tangled with Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan in earlier days. He famously quipped after the Nixon plumbers break-in at Watergate: “Well, at least now we have the burglar vote.”
Dole was a loyal Republican all his life, but unfortunately became a sort of stuffed pet of lowlife Republican grifters at the end. He supported Bush and then Rubio in their primary campaigns, but stayed in the party and supported Trump after Trump won the nomination in 2016, and 2020 too. But he wasn’t so out of it that he would go along with the “Big Lie.” He said Trump lost the 2020 election, and was always personally closer to Pence than the Orange demagogue. Bob Dole was 98 when he said on his birthday in July, “I’m sort of Trumped out.”