You do realize that this is completely ridiculous?? The reason McCain lost is that his "moderation" turned off enough Republicans that they didn't turn out to vote. This is proven conclusively by the post-election analysis of voter turnout. If Palin hadn't been on the ticket, it would have been much worse. As it is, she helped a lot----but not enough to over come having "moderate" McCain as the standard bearer. That, plus McCain's unwillingness to actually campaign on Obama's shortcomings, was the explanation.
If Palin had not been on the ticket it probably would have been worse, I agree, because her job was to galvanise the die-hard republicans, and she did a pretty good job of that. But do you realise how ridiculous that strategy is? Obama won partly because the democrats were better organised this time round and got THEIR core vote out, but partly also because he persuaded the undecideds and moderates and unsures. If conservatism is relying for electoral victory on just “getting its core vote out” rather than winning over new voters, well...that will work for a short while, but in the long term its a recipe for disaster.