Sarah Palin gives a pep talk to conservative bloggers at the Right Online conference

LAS VEGAS -- It was a rousing pep talk for a ballroom full of conservative bloggers, and a tribute to a fallen compadre Friday evening, as Sarah Palin honored the memory of the late Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart and told an annual gathering of conservative new media that they fill a vital role in the nation’s political discourse.

In some ways, Palin’s 35-minute speech was also a vintage performance, her sing-song voice rising and falling as she also castigated and mocked the “lamestream media,” accusing it of failing to vet then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and of promulgating rumors about her personal life, which still seem to get under her skin.

“You do what the old media can’t or won’t do, and that’s tell the truth,” said Palin, who remains a hero of the tea-party right despite her withdrawal from the arena of electoral office. “I have learned in the last four years or so, it doesn’t do any good to personally complain about the untruths told by the old media. I might as well save my breath…. Shoot, by now I should have been divorced how many times? Under FBI investigation. Living in the Hamptons. It still is a great mystery who really is Trig Paxon Van Palin’s real mother.”

Speaking in a ballroom of the Venetian Hotel, owned by heavyweight Republican contributor Sheldon Adelson, Palin did not mention this morning’s announcement by President Obama that he would stop deporting young adults brought to the United States as children. In a brief conversation with Politico after her speech, she accused Obama of “pandering to a specific demographic.”

She did, however, allude to the victory in Wisconsin by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who beat a recall effort on June 5. She reminisced about sharing a stage with Breitbart on the steps of the Wisconsin Capitol in April 2011, at a gathering organized by Americans for Prosperity in support of Walker’s proposals to end collective bargaining for public unions. (The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, part of the anti-tax group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, sponsors the Right Online conference.)

”We were there, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, in the blowing snow and pelting rain on the Capitol steps,” Palin said. “I felt right at home. … And that left-wing mob surrounded us with shouts and they had their drum circles and their cowbells -- oh the cowbells, that was so intimidating.”

Palin told the bloggers that the 2008 presidential campaign was “the final straw” for the credibility of old media, which, she said, devoted itself to studying the cost of her wardrobe, rather than vetting the future president.

“They propped him up and spun for him, and with tingles up their leg, they delivered their chosen one for the victory,” Palin said. “We have the time-tested truths on our side and we will defeat that Goliath of the old media that still seeks to deceive this most exceptional nation. So don’t’ retreat. Reload.”

robin.abcarian@latimes.com