Palin was the ONLY one in 2008 who had the guts to stick it to Obama. Here 2008 Repub. convention nomination speech was just awesome.
Even now, people are still afraid to criticize Obama.
Even more important, she was the first and sometimes the only one to really go after Obama in the first half of 2009, when the GOP was as demoralized as I've ever seen it. She is the one who rallied the others; she took the heat and made it politically safe for the politicians to pick up their sticks and start fighting back.
She has never gone after any of her fellow Repubs, even when they were going after her. She has kept her focus on Obama.