I once had an enthusiasm for Sarah Palin. Acutally, it started a few months before her vp bid.
She lost me in 2010, when she put loyalty to John McCain over loyalty to the Tea Party and its values. We will dearly pay for that for six years.
Try to imagine a different 2010, one where the 2008 presidential ticket being at each other's throats, was the dominant, 24 hour news story, and the revelation that the republican ticket had been a terrible, cynical, sham, deceiving all of the loyal republican voters, was the image of the republican party for the 2010 election cycle.
McCain would have still won his safe seat, but the conservative movement would not have made one of the most successful national electoral sweeps in history.