Sarah Palin’s Skit Ends CPAC on Fun Note

Sarah Palin brought the house down on the last day of the Conservative Political Action (CPAC) conference near Washington D.C. as she mocked not only President Obama and Democrats in general, but Republicans as well.

It was a bipartisan bashing that brought the rowdy crowd to its feet repeatedly. The former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate referred to herself as a “hockey mom from Wasilla” and she let her own political party have it, targeting renowned GOP consultant Karl Rove, who is considered the architect of President George W. Bush’s many political victories.

Rove recently said Republicans need to choose candidates who are more “electable” and less ideologically contentious. Palin fired back in front of the CPAC crowd, which consisted largely of young college students: “The last thing we need is Washington, D.C., vetting our candidates. The architects can head on back to the great Lone Star state and put their names on some ballot.”

She did save the best for President Obama, however, saying that true leadership means “ending the poisonous practice of treating members of different social, ethnic and religious groups as different electorates, pandered to with different promises.” If all men are created equal, as the Declaration of Independence states, Palin said, then there are “no Hispanic issues or African-American issues or women’s issues — there are only American issues.”

Palin said that calling Obama a good politician is like describing convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff as “a good salesman.” The difference is “the president is using our money.” She also attacked the president’s failed promise to have the most open administration in history. “Barack Obama promised the most transparent administration ever. Barack Obama, you lied,” Palin said.

When Palin ducked under the podium to retrieve a Big Gulp cup filled with soda the crowd went wild. She sucked on the straw then said: “Oh, Bloomberg’s not around, our Big Gulp’s safe.” Then she said; “Shoot, it’s just pop with low-cal ice cubes in it. I hope that’s OK.” The skit was meant to poke fun at New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s call to ban oversized sodas.

It was a fun way to end the three-day conference that mostly featured the typically boring speeches by a variety of politicians, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Texas’s new Cuban-American Senator Ted Cruz. At a gala dinner on Friday night, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush delivered a mostly uneventful speech after the Oak Ridge Boys rocked the place with their most popular hits.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, best known for taking on the unions and beating a union-driven recall campaign, also delivered a fiery speech on the last day of CPAC, though Palin was by far the most entertaining. Entitlement reform, Walker said, should be cast as “moving people from government dependence to true independence.”