Re: 2nd Term Part VII: You May Like Your Doctor But You Can't Keep Her
I agree with the 'American Conservative' website. Putin should not be a hero for conservatives:
The Right’s Putin Problem
The Russian president is an autocratic right-wing nationalist, not a model for American conservatives.
The American Conservative
The counterintuitive argument that Putin should be considered a hero of American conservatives probably originated with the founder of this magazine who asked last year whether in “the culture war for mankind’s future,” Russian President Vladimir Putin was “one of us,” speculating that the former member of the Soviet Communist Party and ex-KGB agent was, well, a paleoconservative.
Other conservative-leaning pundits perpetuated the meme. Matt Drudge called Putin the “leader of the free world,” while Victor Davis Hanson, who in what sounded like a bizarre S&M fantasy, ruminated that “Putin is almost Milton’s Satan–as if, in his seductive evil, he yearns for clarity, perhaps even a smackdown, if not just for himself, for us as well.”
More recently, the British Spectator magazine published a big “think” piece suggesting that Putin actually hopes to become the “the leader of global social conservatism.” The Daily Show even ran a spoof titled, “Better Off Red,” which portrayed Russia as the new “conservative paradise.”
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-rights-putin-problem/