In the weeks and especially days before the presidential election, many observers expressed the belief that they expected Governor Sarah Palin to play an important role in the Republican Party in the coming years, regardless of the results of the election.

The day after the election, it is time to look at Palin’s future and to wonder whether she could indeed play a big role in the coming years, and especially with regards to a possible conservative reformation.

Although many independent and moderate voters told pollsters they were not particularly positively impressed by Palin, the social conservative base embraced her from the moment she gave a much praised speech at the Republican National Convention during which she accepted the offer to be John McCain’s running mate.

Many conservative activists and thinkers, including the greatly respected guys at The Next Right, made clear that they believed Palin should play a key role in the Republican Party in the years ahead, and could become the leader of the conservative movement.

Others, especially ‘elite’ or ‘intellectual conservatives’ such as Peggy Noonan, on the other hand, were highly negative of Palin, arguing that she represented all that was wrong with the GOP. She was considered anti-intellectual, overly religious, and uninformed. A hockey mom who should have stayed home in Alaska.

Additionally, these conservatives argued that she was hurting McCain’s chances of winning, and perhaps willingly so. The Republican Party would be better and stronger without her, the message was.

One day after the election, this battle has become fiercer. The British Ambassador in Washington D.C. was reported as informing his superiors in London that John McCain greatly disliked Palin, privately making jokes about her like: “you know the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom? The pit bull eventually lets go.”

McCain aides also took aim at Palin shortly after the election. Newsweek reported today that aides to McCain said that Palin spent more on clothes than the $150,000 reported earlier, and that no one but she was to blame for the reports in the press that did tremendous damage to her image as a hockey mom. According to sources, Palin went on tremendous shopping sprees, buying clothes for herself, her husband and their children. ‘

One angry aide described the shopping sprees as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.”

Meanwhile, Palin was asked to speak at CPAC in 2009, whereas McCain was not. Not yet, anyway, and it certainly is likely he will not be invited either. During this year’s CPAC, Mitt Romney beat McCain in a poll whom attendees supported. This while Romney had already withdrawn from the race.

Furthermore, polls conducted yesterday show Palin to be the third most popular possible future leader of the GOP. The most popular future Republican conservative according to the poll? Former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney.

And then there is the advise of one of the most popular conservative bloggers around, Hot Air’s AP, who argues that Palin is a darling of the base, and will be the base’s darling no matter what. She should now, AP writes, reach out to independents and moderates, study hard, and show America that she is more than ‘just a hockey mom.’

In short, it seems likely that Palin will continue to play an important role in the Republican Party in the coming year. She may not become the party’s standard bearer, there are other possibly more talented politicians out there who could truly become the face of the party Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney being two of them, but that she will continue to be a national conservative leader seems clear.