AZ, believe me a Palin nomination is exactly what us liberals want to see 
What is best for this country? That Barack Obama win in a gigantic landslide? The last three Presidents who won re-election by landslides had bad second terms. Reagan may not be particularly relevant because of Alzheimer's. Nixon had Watergate blow up on him, and LBJ let the Vietnam War spiral into a disaster. Eisenhower didn't let that happen, but that says much about Eisenhower.
Sarah Palin has demonstrated her extreme incompetence and her demagogic streak, both dangerous in what can be a very dangerous time. Her "Real America" stuff polarized America into places sympathetic to her (her "Real America") and alienated people in places that she swiped at for being not-so-real Someone can take a county map of votes and see that most counties went for McCain... but look at populations, and places with the largest population densities went for Obama. McCain/Palin lost Suburbia badly -- probably because they had obsolete views of what suburbia is like. (It's genuinely urban, folks -- maybe without the extreme poverty of some urban slums, but it has big needs and a need for big, expensive government to solve lots of problems. Economic uncertainty and severe inequality of income have become menaces to suburban standards of comfort).
If you are a conservative, then the best thing that can happen is that Obama run scared in 2012 -- whether he wins or loses. You might have little control over things that cause him to win or lose (the economy, foreign affairs) -- but the best thing that can happen is that he has to do some genuine campaigning in places like Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, and Florida so that he can clarify his positions and tell us what he can promise in a second term. You don't want him picking off Texas or Tennessee.
You want the GOP to become a viable Party again, one that offers a valid alternative once the Democrats get stale. You don't want your Party to become one of limited support by region. You want it to develop a new coalition capable of winning. That means that your faction might want need to make some compromises. It's a tough choice, but you might have to sacrifice some contentment with Party ideology to get broader support in 2014 through 2020 when the Democrats achieve all that they can and start running out of ideas.
Sarah Palin has demonstrated her incompetence as a leader. She has bailed out of a Governorship. Michelle Bachmann has demonstrated that she is a potential Joseph R. McCarthy. I'm not going to pretend that Communism was no political threat in the 1950s and that the US had to defeat the Commie efforts to subvert its own political life as well as that of its allies... but remember a big difference between McCarthy and Nixon: Nixon actually unmasked Alger Hiss, and McCarthy had nothing more than a list of "security risks" (homosexuals, alcoholics, gamblers on credit, and people with relatives behind the Iron Curtain). The last thing that we need in this country is political witch-hunts that ruin lives unjustly and push people into radical causes.
Spoken like a supporter of George Wallace in the summer of 1968. I don't get the "Lion King" reference: if anything, the hyenas are made to look like fascists, and Scar is made to seem like a Quisling.
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