Ann who?

A tall, blond neo-conservative political pundit, invited to speak by a conservative youth group called Young America's Foundation ("The Conservative Movement Starts Here"), today compared presidential candidate John McCain to Adolph Hitler.

These rabid attacks on McCain, who has the support of most Republicans voting in recent primaries and caucuses, reveal the astonishing disconnect between the loudest voices in the conservative movement and the conservative foot-soldiers who still believe in small government, fiscal and moral responsibility, who are ashamed of the Bush years - perhaps not all of them, but certainly the last few.

One would hope their horror would deepen at the incomprehensible attacks on American veterans - McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war, and the more than 200,000 left homeless because of the way we use up soldiers and throw them away. While chiding the peace-loving liberals for deserting the U.S. military, the neo-con talkers see no hypocrisy at all in assassinating the character of any soldier whose political philosophies don't match with their own.

And yet after these scurrilous attacks, most conservatives remain eerily silent. You'd think a preacher would speak up. At least.