The American Conservative Union (ACU), which runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), announced on Monday that Sarah Palin will speak at the 40th annual gathering of conservatives in March.
“We are pleased to again welcome Governor Sarah Palin to CPAC in March,” ACU Chairman Al Cardenas said in a statement. “Governor Palin electrified the crowd in 2012 and we are thrilled to welcome her back this year.”
CPAC 2013 will be held Thursday, March 14 through Saturday, March 16, 2013 at its new location in National Harbor, MD at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.
The non-Washington, D.C. location of this year’s conference is fitting for Palin, who blistered the permanent political class and crony capitalism during her 2012 address last year in the nation’s capital in her first appearance at the conference.
Last year, she was mobbed in the hallways before her speech. Palin stayed for nearly an hour after speaking, engaging conservatives and supporters who were there to listen to her. Reporters and observers at CPAC noted in 2012 they had not seen anyone who resonated with the conservative base more than Palin.
At CPAC 2012, Palin said Washington, D.C. had become “something that our forefathers never envisioned, and they would have sworn their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor to change.”
Palin said the “old Washington of our Founders” was a place where people “came to serve your government, not prosper over it and on it and from it and off of it.” She mentioned the country’s wealthiest counties were all around the D.C. region, a theme director Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute would later document a year later in “Boomtown.”
She referenced her speech in Indianola, Iowa in 2011 when she spoke of “crony capitalism” that “isn’t the capitalism of free men and free markets, of risk and sacrifice, of innovation and hard work.” She said the new crony capitalism is one of “connections” and of “government bailout and handouts” and waste, “corporate welfare and corruption.”
After her Indianola speech, “crony capitalism” and “permanent political class” were injected into the political vocabulary.
“This is the capitalism of Barack Obama and the permanent political class,” Palin said at CPAC in 2012.
She lambasted the Occupy protesters who were at the conference in 2012, saying they should be instead protesting at Obama’s White House, which has “spurred the expansion of government which diminishes freedom and opportunity for all to rise and to succeed.”
Palin derided politicians who come to Washington, D.C. “denouncing the place as the cesspool of corruption” only to, after a year or two, see it as a hot tub.
“And they are hopping in and enjoying the jacuzzi,” Palin said, noting it was “time we drain the jacuzzi and throw the bums out with the bath water.”
After Palin turned down Fox News’ offer to renew her contract, she spoke exclusively to Breitbart News about her future. When asked what her response was to the mainstream media’s declarations that she and the Tea Party were “buried,” Palin said she was raised “to never retreat and to pick battles wisely, and all in due season.”
“When it comes to defending our republic, we haven’t begun to fight! But we delight in those who underestimate us,” Palin told Breitbart News last month.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.