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Sarah Palin’s Main CPAC Speech Points: Did She Sell Out?

-By Warner Todd Huston

I am just now back home from CPAC and I thought I’d wrap up my CPAC reports with the main points from Sarah Palin’s CPAC speech. I will have video of a dozen or so GOP candidates for Senate and the House over the ensuing days as well as a short video interview with Daniel Hannan, the Member of European Parliament that made himself beloved to Americans for his impassioned speeches in favor of freedom and liberty.

Those videos will come later, but now, on to Sarah’s speech. As expected, Sarah Palin was met with the most adulatory applause of any CPAC speaker. When she came out onto the stage the house went wild. She had the longest sustained standing ovation of the entire event. Obviously, Sarah Palin is still a rock star to these conservatives.

I live tweeted her speech and following this introduction I’ll repost those live tweets here so that you can see her main points as she delivered them and as I tweeted them. But first my over all impressions.

Palin spent a lot of time smacking President Obama over the head with his smashing failures over the last three years. She made no effort to be coy about it but attacked him head on. As in all her speeches — and I’ve been in the audience for a few of them, myself — she made many allusions to the founders, citing them often. And she ended up with an urgent plea to those watching to fall in behind who ever becomes the GOP nominee “for the sake of our country.” This ending might have surprised, maybe even dismayed her more ideological fans because perhaps she just proved to be just another party woman instead of the ideologically pure representative they’d hoped for.

But her plea for party unity — even as she didn’t herself endorse anyone — is just smart politics. For her, at least. It will keep her in the good graces of the party establishment in her ongoing efforts to continue influencing Republicans. If she went on the attack against, say, Mitt Romney, and he became the nominee, well she would have made herself an outsider to party bigwigs. For her, that would be bad.

But, as I mentioned, one has to wonder how her most ardent supporters took this fealty to the party line that Palin displayed? So many of her fans expect her to be the maverick, the outsider holding the party to its principles. But if she’s going to become just another party booster will that make her just another politician that sold out her principles for party power and position? Only time will answer that question.

For now, Sarah Palin proved she’s still the most beloved figure among conservatives.

Here are my live tweets in the order they appeared:
Note the tweets inside parenthesis are my comments. Everything else was Sarah’s

• (Get ready for a live tweeting of Sarah Palin…)
• (Sarah bounds up on the stage to a raucous house of supporters!)
• The last time I was in DC we were cruising on Harley’s with Rolling Thunder.
• Todd is back home training for the sled race so he’s not here with me today.
• Rolling Thunder chose DC to rev their engines to be heard and that’s why CPAC is here.
• CPAC has been THE rally for conservative action
• Govt. has never cast a bigger shadow and we are waving flags that say don’t tread on me.
• Our moving is bigger than one person, one candidate, one party, we are red white and blue and Obama we are thru with you!
• Obama promised to fundamentally transform Amer. and he’s kept that. City on the hill transformed into a sinking ship.
• Obama’s mucked it up.
• What did we get in exchange for Prez spending spree? Folks are fearing that our future will be worse than our past.
• It’s not a failure of our people, it’s a failure of our leadership. But we can change that- oh, yes we can!
• Hope and change, you better HOPE things change!
• (Sarah interrupted by chants of USA, USA as someone tried to interrupt her)
• See, you just won! Do you see how easy that is? (response to CPACers shouting down OWS protesters)
• If they keep trying to tax and spend our way to prosperity, look at Europe. That’s not the Amer. Dream! Not a future we accept.
• Mr. Obama we want your administration to end!
• 7 in 10 Americans say we are heading in the wrong direction. We can’t succeed unless govt gets out of the way.
• Americans should not work so hard so Washington can spend so easy.
• Obama has a plan to “win the future.” WTF, I know! And he says I’m the idiot.
• We say his plan isn’t winning the future, it’s losing our country. We say the free market will work again.
• He says we need more regulations, we say ask MFGlobal customers how they like his regs.
• We say you keep your change and we’ll keep our guns, our God, and our Constitution!
• Professor Obama may have forgotten the bill of rights, but we will not.
• The prez believes that your taxes should fund Planned Parenthood but we believe in the sanctity of life.
• We will stand up for those that can’t stand up for themselves.
• We believe it’s time to return power to the people like the founders imagined.
• Obama feels that America is a destructive force in the world that we should cut our military while everyone else builds
• Our number one Con. duty is to protect the American people… and God bless Israel!
• We will never apologize for America’s strength and greatness. American power means a better and safer world.
• We put our faith in the power of our armed forces not the hollow promises of our enemies. We MUST be home of the brave.
• The prez has such a skewed view because he doesn’t get out much… but 11 months from now he’ll have a lot of time!
• The divide between Wash. and the rest of the country has never been better. Wash. grows as the rest of us flail.
• This is Obama’s Wash., not the Wash. of our founders but the Wash. of the political class.
• This is the playground for the govt rich and they hope you’ll work really, really hard to keep them going.
• Friends there is no such sense of urgency to fix this economy in Wash. They are content, they exempt themselves.
• The EPA is enslaving us to foreign sources of energy.
• When was the last time the EPA objected to the building of a new govt building?
• Maybe instead of calling Wash “the swamp” we should make it a wetlands so the EPA will stop growing govt.
• The $$ making opportunities for politicians is endless. They spread the wealth to their friends.
• Crony capitalism is a root of our economic problems, it has spurred the rise of government.
• Govt crowds out the initiative and the pioneering American spirit.
• They come to DC saying that Wash is a cesspool, but after a year they say, eehh, it’s more like a hot tub!
• Well it’s time to drain the hot tub and throw the bums out with the bath water.
• I toast the tea party members in Congress. Many have fought bravely against the status quo.
• They have kept the promises. Now they need reinforcements. WILL YOU HELP THEM??
• This election we are going to take back the Sen. and fortify the House. THIS time we expect, leadership, to get leader assgnmts
• We should not forget for all of Obama’s lofty rhetoric, he is a Chgo politicians with all the graft and corruption.
• Obama never challenged the corruption. He used it. He brought it to Washington.
• Lord only knows how many Solyndras are out there. We can’t afford to find out.
• Our nominee must be ready, strong, fortified, passionate, a fighter for Amer. ideals!
• But we have to make sure the competition is good for the party.
• In 2008 we saw that some will do anything to destroy our ticket. Together we must stand as conservatives.
• For the sake of our country we must stand united who ever our nominee is.
• We will have a commander in chief worthy of our troops.
• Standards of right and wrong do exist and they must be lived up to.
• (Occupiers trying to crash Palin’s speech. Many got into the lobby)
• (By the way, the house is going mad for Sarah. BIG applause almost every time)
• Our vision of govt works for us not against us.
• the door is open, God bless you patriots and God bless America.
• (Crowd goes wild. Sarah steps down off the stage and starts shaking hands of attendees.)
• (Thanks for being with me for a live tweet of Sarah Palin’s CPAC speech and thanks everyone for the retweets.)

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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.