With that simple question, Buchanan has done the unthinkable — empathized with Russia's evil president — and the online world is outraged.

"Putin is a killer, a despot, and a thief on a world-historical scale," the Daily Beast's David Frum tweeted this afternoon, "but the important thing is that he hates gays!"

But Buchanan's question (and the apparently positive answer he finds) deserves more than a mere dismissal. Indeed, it may represent a broader trend among U.S. conservatives that found some unlikely people sympathizing more with Russia's president than their own — just this summer, for example, Matt Drudge branded him the "leader of the free world."