While delivering her speech at CPAC, Sarah Palin drank from a big gulp. This was appropriate because just like her jumbo soda, her twenty minute speech was filled with empty calories.
Palin rehashed five years of her greatest hits, bashing elites and Barack Obama while praising the Second Amendment and the middle class. She even yet again referred to herself as “a hockey mom.” But Palin had no new ideas for the conservative movement, and no clear policy suggestions. Instead, she cracked wise at the expense of Democrats and the liberal media. It wasn’t so much a speech as a political night club act.
The former Republican vice presidential nominee made jokes about “Obamaphones” and followed a quotation of Margaret Thatcher by exclaiming “Amen Sistah.” She even played to the crowd heavily composed of College Republicans, encouraging them to “think Sam Adams, not drink Sam Adams.”
Palin even worked a little bit blue by using leering innuendo to describe what she and her husband exchanged for Christmas, “Todd got the rifle and I got the rack.”
The crowd was left cheering on its feet when Palin exited the stage to Shania Twain’s song “Not Just A Pretty Face.” But that’s all she really was.
After a CPAC where Rand Paul roused a crowd with a fiercely libertarian speech, Marco Rubio spoke up for Bush-style conservatism and Rick Santorum urged the party to stick to its traditional policies on social issues, Palin’s speech was only memorable because she had a soda.