Has it ever occurred to anyone, that Putin's Russia today is a conservative's "paradise"? I mean, if you do not agree with everything that the 'progressive left' stand for, you may feel quite good in Russia.

Putin's government is supporting the church, and promoting traditional family values. They have instituted significant money benefits for families with children, and as a result the much talked about decline in Russia's population has been stopped in 2013. For the first time in modern Russian history there are more babies born in Russia than people die of old age. http://www.amren.com/news/2013/06/russias-population-decline...

The laws prohibiting "gay propaganda" should be viewed in the context of these policies. Obviously, being gay as such is not illegal in Russia. There are gay bars in any large Russian city, and quite a few of celebrities have admitted to be gay. However, they have made it illegal to promote homosexuality publicly.

Then, there are economic policies of Putin that would make Reagan jealous. Russian government has adopted a flat 13% tax rate on all incomes in 2001. Not only this has made Russia one of the lowest tax jurisdictions in the world. Most importantly, the flat rate has removed thousands of 'tax exceptions' that is the source of economic inefficiencies and outright corruption in most of 'developed' countries. Here is a noted US conservative lamenting that Putin has achieved something he had worked on most of his life. "We won the Cold War, but Russia gets a flat tax while America is stuck with a Byzantine tax system based on class-warfare ideology."
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2003/03/russias-....

Finally, the 'freedom of press opression' and 'political persecution of opponents' thesis is in many ways overblown. Most popular Russian internet media outlets are openly anti-Putin (lenta.ru, slon.ru etc. etc.). The most listened to news/talk-show radio station (Echo Moskvy) is strongly anti-Putin, and a very popular cable TV channel (Dozhd) is also anti-Putin and anti-establishment.

And the trial of the poster-child of anti-Putin opposition Mr Khodorkovsky (who was imprisoned years ago on fraud and tax-evasion charges) has just been recognised as a 'non-political' by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) (read: Khodorkovsky was indeed a crook, and his sentencing was not influenced by his anti-Putin stance). http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-european-court-khodorkov...

Putin's government is also following Western conservative script with regard to intellectual property. Actually, today the have effected a broad-reaching anti-piracy law that would outlaw any internet site that publishes links to illegal movie download or torrent-trackers. To Putin's credit, the downloaders of illegal content themselves will not be prosecuted. So, parents of teenagers need not worry about gigantic fines etc.

Obviously, Putin is no friend to US conservatives, primarily because Putin is a nationalist and conducts an independent foreign policy. What is good for Russia need not be good for the US. And vice versa. But Putin may be good for those Russians that hold traditional conservative values. Hell, such people may feel Russia is the last bastion of true conservatism left in the world, while not being exactly a Pinochet-like fascist place.