If Palin feels that excessive loyalty to McCain on her part is necessary, then perhaps she should not serve as the leader of the conservative movement, since her admiration for the man has clearly blinded her and is now a liability, not just to her, but to the conservative movement, if she were to become its leader.
As stephenjohnbanker wrote at post 59, McCain is a vile man and a traitor. I agree with this assessment.
If Palin is unwilling to confront McCain, or at least get out of the way of other conservatives (like Hayworth) who are willing to confront McCain on his repugnant political record, including his post-election moves to continue shaping the Republican Party into a lite version of the Democrat Party, then she has a serious problem on her hands.
40 percent.
Until that number changes, your advice is political suicide. The real question is, where will be the base of the next GOP nominee? On the right, reaching leftwards (Palin), or on the left, reaching rightwards (Romney)?
The former sounds much better to me than the latter. The GOP cannot win national office without some moderates. The trick is to win those moderates and still get a sound conservative into office. You are so driven by purity that you turn the perfect into the enemy of the good.
McCain turned Palin into a national figure. We would not even be having a conversation about Palin being a national figure without such. Palin knows it, and so do the realists - you know, the people who try to figure out how to add 10.1 percent to 40 percent every four years.