Sarah Palin Targets 'Crony Capitalists,' Occupy Wall Street and Obama In Same Speech

In a folksy speech to Republicans Thursday night, Sarah Palin ripped "crony capitalists" on Wall Street, slammed the Occupy Wall Street protesters for not understanding them, and accused President Barack Obama of coddling them both.

Palin, the former Alaskan governor-turned-princess of the national Tea Party movement since running for vice president in 2008, ripped all who expect bailouts from the government, starting with Wall Street firms.

She was the featured speaker for 800 Republicans dining at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort for the Republican Party of Florida's "Victory Dinner."

She accused Obama of "taking care" of crony capitalists who take government money then fail, such as the solar energy company Solyndra. "And now they're on course to raise a billion in his re-election bid so they can keep scratching his back and continue this cycle," she said.

Palin accused the Wall Street protesters of reaching the wrong conclusions.

"They feel legitimate indignation about the Wall Street bailouts," she said of the protesters. "Financial institutions behaving recklessly and then we get stuck with the bill. And then three years later many of us are still quite ticked off about it all because we don't have assurance that those who caused the financial collapse in the first place, that they be held accountable, and that it won't happen again.

"They say, 'The Wall Street fat cats got a bailout. I want one, too.' And the correct answer is, no one should get a bailout," she said.

There is a grassroots movement that wants to end "crony capitalists receiving Wall Street bailouts, auto company bailouts, corporate welfare and the influence of big-business lobbyists, she said, "It's called the Tea Party."

Much of Palin's address offered the view of Washington D.C. from Alaska. She concluded that Obama, Eastern elitists, leftist environmentalists, the mainstream media, "some of those socialist groups, ACORN, and the Communist party" all try to impose their views! from af ar.

As one example, she mentioned restrictions on oil-drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve.

Such rules are espoused by "people who live 4,000 miles from Alaska and will never see a caribou in their lives, much less enjoy one in their stew," she said. "They say they want to save the caribou -- from me. In the war for oil in this tumultuous world, in the words of (conservative pundit) Ann Coulter, Mr. Caribou may have to take one for the team."