Palin to Values Voters: Conservatives ‘scare the bejesus’ out of left

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) got a celebrity’s reception at the annual Value Voters Summit for a speech that urged social conservatives to hold their ground against the left, which she said was “afraid” and “desperate and divisive.”

{mosads}“You are their threat. You value equal opportunity, and that scares the bejesus out of them because they know that you can’t argue against those things,” she said.

Palin told the crowd that it’s “time to end the politics of division of theirs. It is time for the politics of values.”

“I don’t want anybody to be afraid or ashamed of the core values that we are here celebrating,” she added.

And she argued that liberal criticism of conservatives was intended to silence the movement.

“They scream ‘racism’ our way just to end debate. Well, don’t retreat. You reload the truth,” she urged the crowd.

Palin’s at times meandering speech took aim broadly at what she called the “Alinsky-loving Orweillian out-of-touch command-and-control elitists who have been running the show,” but she also landed a jab at President Obama specifically and the flap over his recent salute to a soldier while holding a coffee cup, which drew criticism from Republicans.

She saluted the president and held up a styrofoam cup of her own, drawing laughs. Palin’s used drinking cups as props during previous speeches, once bringing a Big Gulp cup on stage to lambast then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign against them.

In another common Palin occurrence, the former vice presidential contender flubbed a fact when again taking aim at the president, declaring that “truth is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue” — presumably a reference to the White House, which is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

Palin also defended herself against rumors sparked by a recent paparazzi photo of her coming out of the gym without her wedding ring. She said it wasn’t unusual in Alaska, and she was probably “chopping wood or butchering a moose or something.”