Would Hunter S. Thompson Vote for Mitt Romney? Revisiting Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

It’s been almost 40 years and coming up on 10 Presidential elections since Hunter S. Thompson released his political opus Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. Reading the book today it is almost impossible to not wonder what Hunter S. would make of the current election contest between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. The easy assumption would be to think that Thompson would support the Democrat Obama but would that really be the case?

On the surface it seems ridiculous that Hunter S. Thompson would vote for Romney. Would a person who once ran on the Freak Power ticket for sheriff actually support someone as completely square as Mitt Romney? Would the man who was proud of being the “first journalist in Christendom to go on record comparing Nixon to Adolph Hitler” really vote for a Republican?

Thompson has always been a bit of a paradox and it should be noted that the guy who said he voted for Dick Gregory of the Freedom and Peace Party in 1968 was also the same guy who wrote that he was prepared to vote for Richard Nixon if Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic Party candidate in 1972. The pertinent question then becomes whether Hunter would view Obama today (not the Obama from 2008) as more of a George McGovern or more of a Hubert Humphrey-type candidate?