Bloggers left and right took notice Monday of Sarah Palin's seeming split with running mate John McCain over the Federal Marriage Amendment. But overlooked in Palin's announcement that she supports a constitutional ban on same sex marriage is that hers - and not McCain's - is the official position of the Republican Party platform.
In her interview with CBN, Palin parted company with McCain over the need for enshrining a prohibition on marriage for gay Americans in the United States Constitution:

BRODY (CBN): On Constitutional marriage amendment, are, are you for something like that?
PALIN: I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage.

Governor Palin may have bucked John McCain, but not her party. As it turns out, Palin is merely stating the position of the 2008 Republican Party platform blessed by the GOP faithful at the St. Paul convention:

"We call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it."

On abortion, too, it is Sarah Palin's draconian line reflected in the GOP platform. While John McCain has repeatedly said, "my position has always been: exceptions of rape, incest and the life of the mother," the Republican platform document clearly states the opposite. And McCain's federalist claim (i.e. that regulation of abortion should be left to the states) is not the guiding principle of his party's platform:

"We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

While the Republican Party apparently added fetal due process rights during the process of creating the 2008 GOP platform, John McCain played no part in that process at all. An astonished Chuck Todd of MSNBC described McCain's abdication of the platform-writing to radicals in his own party:

"They made the decision not to fight these delegates here on this issue. Senator McCain, this platform does not represent Senator McCain's conservatism. He did not make it his party's platform. He made it the Republican Party platform, that he happens to be representing. Stark contrast to Barack Obama who went ahead, changed the wording on abortion, put in a line in there that made pro-life Democrats a little more comfortable. That was not done here. If anything this is as stringent of a platform on abortion the Republican Party ever has. And the problem is this. These delegates are more conservative - I had, I had - than, than even the ones four years ago. Than even the ones eight years ago."

When John McCain shocked millions of Americans with his condescension and air quotes about the "health of the mother" during his final debate with Barack Obama, his Republican supporters showed no surprise at all. Ignoring the health of American women, after all, is the express intent of their party's platform.
So, too, with marriage equality. Sarah Palin may have disagreed John McCain about the Federal Marriage Amendment. But it is her view, and not that of the nominee himself, the Republican ticket is running on.