Sarah Palin praises free market in Las Vegas convention speech

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Sarah Palin was the featured speaker Sunday afternoon at the International Council of Shopping Centers convention, part of RECon 2010, which was billed as the world’s largest gathering of real estate professionals.

A free-market economy in which business owners have control over their destinies is best for everyone, Palin said several times during the nearly 40-minute speech. Other topics included so-called “Obamacare,” business taxes, oil and shopping.

Palin said Las Vegas is a portrait of the American entrepreneurial spirit. Just as Las Vegas was built in a barren desert, she said, small business owners know what it is like to make “something out of nothing.”

“I think that every politician who wants to run for office should have run a business before,” she said.

The crowd cheered. “You are the backbone of our nation’s economy,” she said.

Palin said she and her husband, Todd, enjoy coming to Las Vegas. Palin said she disagreed with a controversial statement President Barack Obama made last year about spending money in Las Vegas. Tourism should be encouraged, she said, because it bolsters the local economy.

“I was so proud of the good, noble mayor here, Mayor Goodman, who dared take on anyone who suggested Vegas wasn’t a good place to be,” she said. “I thought, man, he sounds like he’s goin’ rogue. He took on the president, even.”

Gov. Palin told her audience that as a city council member in Wasilla, Alaska, she voted against any measure she considered to be anti-business, and on her watch as mayor, Wasilla grew from a town without a Wal-Mart into a small retail center.

Update: More from Commercial Real Estate Examiner Doug Bardwell here. Bardwell's report of Gov. Palin's speech being well-received at the convention is confirmed by The Record of Hackensack. The newspaper reported that "Sarah Palin was getting standing ovations from a corporate-minded full house of 5,000 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Sunday..." Both accounts debunk lying leftist bloggers who claim that the governor's speech was "disastrous." The anti-Palin hit squads operate 24/7/365, and they never rest.

- JP