Ben Smith links to an inter­view that Sarah Palin gave to Hugh Hewitt this after­noon. In it, after attack­ing Barack Obama for his views on abor­tion, she refers to

my posi­tion of just want­ing that cul­ture of life to be respected, and not want­ing gov­ern­ment to sanc­tion the idea of ending life.

Are we allowed to ask, then (or would it con­sti­tute more “gotcha journalism”?) if this means that Palin opposes the death penalty as well? From what I’ve seen around the inter­net, she would seem not to, but if you don’t want “government to sanc­tion the idea of ending life” doesn’t that mean you don’t want gov­ern­ment to sanc­tion the idea of ending life?

And yes, I know that the Repub­li­can Party has tried to hijack the phrase “culture of life” from the orig­i­nal sense in which Pope John Paul II deployed it. The pope did use it to oppose abor­tion but also to oppose the death penalty (and euthana­sia, and stem cell research). When the Repub­li­cans imported it into their 2004 plat­form, how­ever, they explic­itly endorsed the government’s right to impose the death penalty.

None of that really mat­ters, though, since in the second part of that sen­tence Palin is unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally clear about the role gov­ern­ment should (not) have in ending life. Do I believe that Palin really opposes the death penalty? Of course not, though it would be one of the few good things I could say about her if she did.