Sarah Palin’s keynote address Friday night at the fifth annual RightOnline conference in Las Vegas was bold, pugnacious and brimming with love for her fellow conservatives.
Andrew Breitbart would have eaten it up.
The late media maven was everywhere Friday at the Venetian Hotel – on placards waved by conservative bloggers, on the minds of the Breitbart News team who paid loving tribute to their former boss and in the former governor’s battle cry.
Palin hit the stage to Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation,” and she quickly showed just why the Left does everything it can to marginalize her. Few of her peers can rally a crowd better
“Without you,” Palin told the raucous crowd, “there probably wouldn’t be a Tea Party movement.”
The Alaskan native mocked the Occupy movement, taunted the media for detailing minutiae of her wardrobe but ignoring then-Sen. Barack Obama’s radical roots and praised New Media for turning the tide against the unions in Wisconsin earlier this month.
Palin recalled visiting Wisconsin last year along with Breitbart, and she marveled at how he inserted himself into the wacky liberal protests without a shred of fear.
“Few people were willing to wade into that mess … but Andrew was there,” she said.
Palin kept right on mocking the “lamestream media,” taking them to task for insinuating she wasn’t the real mother of her son, Trig, and for omitting hard truths that didn’t fit its liberal narrative.
“The New Media rose up because the old media failed to tell the truth,” she said, noting a traditional news outlet spiked the Monica Lewinsky story 11 times before mild-mannered Matt Drudge hit the publish button.
Even then, Drudge could see how the media landscape was changing.
“You are the future he predicted,” she told the crowd. Later, she thanked the attendees for helping her fight back against the media smears against her and her family. And, given the recent SWAT-ing cases against conservative bloggers, New Media pioneers must do all they can to protect their own.
“We need to have each other’s back,” she said, adding Breitbart left conservatives with the gift of his fearlessness to do just that.
“Stand your ground, and others will stand with you,” she said.
Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips marveled at how effective Breitbart was at driving the Left to distraction. And his lessons still resonate.
“He taught us how to expose the hypocrisy of the Left, and oh, did the liberals hate him for it,” Phillips said. “They didn’t have a chance against Andrew.”
Michelle Malkin, who earlier in the week verbally destroyed Juan Williams for saying she was “just a blogger,” honored Breitbart for fighting the good fight without losing his humanity – or sense of humor.
“Andrew Breitbart told the truth with a smile on his face,” Malkin said.
The night also included a sneak peek at “Hating Breitbart,” an upcoming documentary by director Andrew Marcus, and the screening of “Occupy Unmasked,” a film showing a side of the far-left movement mainstream media outlets refused to show the public.