When it comes to John McCain, Sarah Palin just can’t win.

Campaigning for the man who catapulted her onto the national stage has prompted some McCain detractors to demote her from conservative rock star to unprincipled RINO sell-out.  But were she to snub her former running mate, she’d be branded a disloyal backstabbing ingrate.

There’s no question McCain’s campaign staff repeatedly smeared Palin to distract from their own ineptitude.  And once or twice, McCain experienced Bidenesque foot-in-mouth disease when discussing Palin with interviewers.  But author Shushanna Walshe notes there are “no hard feelings between the former GOP presidential and vice-presidential nominees, even after all the public warring continues between some of McCain’s closest advisers and Palin.”

My sense is that Palin and McCain share genuine affection for one another. In fact, McCain has spoken highly of Palin and her ideas, and Palin has frequently described McCain as a man of honor and character. She takes to heart what Ronald Reagan once told his staff:  “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.”

Sarah Palin is campaigning for John McCain because she values personal loyalty over political expediency. Sure, that’s a potential political weakness, but it’s also a sign of integrity.

In her memoir, Going Rogue, Palin laments a politically-motivated decision to support a candidate running against her stepmother-in-law in a mayoral race.

I loved Faye and knew she’d be a great mayor, but I didn’t know if she’d defeat a former multiterm mayor. It was a lame excuse for a lame deed, and deep inside I realized it.

That lesson about loyalty stuck with Palin. Choosing to support John McCain in the face of significant conservative opposition might not win Sarah Palin accolades for Beltway political savvy, but it says quite a bit about her character.

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Follow Jenn Q. Public on Twitter and read more of her work at JennQPublic.com.

When I wrote my first article, “Everything I Need to Know About ACORN, I Learned From Sophie Scholl,” my brilliant husband raised an eyebrow. When I followed with, “Everything I Need to Know About Sarah Palin, I Learned From Sir Ernest Shackleton,” he raised both and said, “Is this a new way to analyze news, find two things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other and twist them together?” I understood that this sort of Cirque de Soleil-journalism might get old quickly, but after staying up most of the night reading Going Rogue, I am going to indulge in one last juxtaposition.

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Trial in New York will be, in its very essence, a fight to the death between the American values extolled by Sarah Palin in her bestseller, Going Rogue, and the radically transformed America dreamt of by the“Unholy Alliance“ of leftist Americans and their Islamic Jihadi counterparts. In his book by that same marvelous title, David Horowitz, the founder of The Freedom Center, recalls the reaction of the Left to the patriotism that unified Americans following 9/11:

In the face of the nation’s grief, without knowing when the next terrorist attack might occur, prominent American leftists seized the occasion to state that the attacks had ‘root causes.’ In other words, America was to no small degree, guilty for what had happened.

The purpose of Mohammed’s trial, is to prosecute the “root cause” of 9/11 that is, America herself. Since Mohammed has already confessed to terrorist attacks, his attorneys will endeavor to show that he was justified in destroying 3,000 American lives.

All the Wrights and Dohrns and Dunns secretly hoping to see Khalid exonerated for his contribution to their “freedom fight” against American “arrogance” detest Sarah Palin and have spent the last year and a half trying to destroy her chances of firing the White House personal chef.

The story chronicled in An American Life exudes a spirit diametrically opposed to that of its Marxist detractors. In fact, according to Peter Johnson Jr., a legal analyst for Fox and Friends, it is precisely Sarah’s unabashed faith in and personification of American exceptionalism that make the left sneer condescendingly at her, while fearing her.

“She represents archetypal American values and American exceptionalism…this is why they despise her. They find her offensive, this woman who chose life over death, who chose to bring a disabled child into this world, this wife of whom they can find no reprehensible behavior.”

In Going Rogue, Palin speaks of her admiration for Ronald Reagan, the President who revived Americans’ pride in their country:

The new Republican president I was studying in school, unabashedly set out to make the United States the strongest power in the world. Reagan said, ‘America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny.’”

Reagan and Palin championed the oh-so-boorish ideal of an America that is synonymous with love of faith, family, children, a strong military and the hard- work ethic by which individuals can better themselves thanks to the freedoms we have been blessed with in this unique place on earth. This is why both leaders are so loved by “always-been-proud Americans.”

Across the table from America, tyranny will sit in that New York courtroom, not only the tyranny that destroyed part of the Pentagon in the name of radical Islamic oppression, but also the tyranny that destroyed part of the Pentagon in the name of Dohrnian-Marxism, the hatred of America by “never-been-proud Americans.”

At the close of Unholy Alliance, Horowitz records the words of Colombia professor, Nicholas De Genova, who said:

“A world in which there is justice and peace is a world where the U.S. would have no place.”

The parting words in Going Rogue are:

“I am thankful for God’s touch on America, which has given us all so many opportunities. By His grace, an American life is an extraordinary life.”

The America loved by Sarah Palin or American absence desired by Mohammed and the Left, there can be but one verdict in this trial. The court will hear the closing arguments from Horowitz:

If the United States did not exist, the Communist empire would still be standing, the Taliban would rule Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein would be in power, and the world would be a place of infinitely greater cruelty, injustice, and tragedy than the world that confronts us today.