Sarah Palin rallied an
online army of conservative bloggers and activists Friday night at a Las
Vegas conference, lambasting the “old media” establishment for what she
described as a failure to “tell the truth” – and pointing to President
Obama’s election as the product of that failure.
Palin headlined the RightOnline convention with a speech that accused
the media of not properly vetting Obama, whom she labeled a socialist,
during the 2008 presidential campaign. She charged the media were more
focused on investigating the price of her wardrobe than they were on
probing Obama’s record.
“If the media had done their job, we would have known of his strange
attraction to leftist, radical ideas,” she said. “We would have known
that he actively sought out Marxist professors.”
The former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential nominee went on
to trumpet the work of the hundreds of bloggers and social media-savvy
activists gathered at the conference inside the Venetian Hotel as
critical in the 2012 presidential election.
“You do what many in the old media can’t do, won’t do, and that’s tell the truth,” she said.
“You are an army of Davids against the old Goliath,” she said,
referring to traditional news sources, which she repeatedly attacked
throughout her fiery speech. “New media is giving voice to the people
because you are of the people and you are leading the charge.”
But in her 35-minute speech meant to galvanize conservative online
activists ahead of November’s vote, Palin, a Fox News contributor, made
no mention of Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Palin has yet to
officially endorse the former Massachusetts governor, who has now earned
more than the 1,144 delegates needed to secure his party’s nomination.
Palin, a Tea Party favorite is heralded by her fans as a leader in
her application of social media, like Facebook and Twitter, to appeal to
like-minded conservatives and break news, such as political
endorsements, to the masses. Her Twitter account has more than 791,000
followers to date.
“This is a political figure who when she does a Facebook post, half
the world turns around and listens,” said Tim Phillips, president of
Americans for Prosperity, the conservative, Virginia-based group that
sponsored the event.
“She’s a pioneer on our side,” Phillips told FoxNews.com. “She’s
probably the best political figure, as far as an elected leader, that
has used social media.”
The RightOnline conference, now in its fifth year, arose as a
counterweight to the progressive “Netroots Nation” of liberal online
activists, which held its convention last weekend in Rhode Island.
The Netroots’ convention, now in its seventh year, was help amid a
less enthusiastic crowd, compared to years past, according to most news
accounts.
“We’ve had our fights with the president, and I’ve been happy to have
those fights for three years,” former Democratic National Committee
Chairman Howard Dean told the crowd. “But the fourth year, we’re on the
same team ... because the alternative is unthinkable.”
Palin also got personal in her speech, addressing the alleged
“lamestream media lies” about her and her family, like rumors about the
maternity of her youngest son, Trig, who suffers from Down syndrome.
“According to these news media reports over these years, shoot, by
now I guess I should have been divorced how many times?,” she said. “And
according to them, in my spare time I burn books and I shoot wolves
from the skids of helicopters,” she said.
Throughout her address, Palin paid tribute to conservative online
entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, whose sudden death from heart failure in
March rocked the conservative blogosphere.
“The greatest gift he left for us was his fearlessness,” Palin told
the crowd, as many of them held up red signs with the 43-year-old’s
image and the words “Breitbart is Here” and “#war.”
Palin, at times, sought to have fun with the crowd injecting some humor – in particular about Obama’s poll numbers.
“Here we are in Vegas — in Washington, too — they talk a lot about
polls. There are a lot of poles in Vegas,” she said, referring to the
poles in a strip club before turning to Obama’s poll numbers. “There is a
reason that the figures in those polls are augmented, too.”
“You are an army of Davids against the old Goliath."
- Sarah Palin
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