New PoliGazette contributor Eric Martin starts his career with a bang today, arguing that Gen. David Petreaus’ comments against torture make him an unlikely prospect for the Republican presidential nomination.

Of course, it is way too early to speculate on Petreaus’ actual intentions or the shape of the 2012 primary field. Other than retreads from 2008 like Palin and Romney as well as a couple of rising stars like Jindal and Pawlenty, it is not even possible to speculate usefully about who might be running. And as former Gulf War star Gen. Colin Powell showed, the road from successful war-time commander to political candidate is often not as direct as many people assume at the time.

But it is worth taking a moment to question Eric’s presumptions that torture is some kind of core value for conservatives, against which dissenters cannot cross the line and still achieve the party’s presidential nomination. To be sure, such issues do in fact exist for both parties. For example, pro-life Democrats are denied even the right to speak at the party’s national convention while pro-choice Republicans fare little better at theirs. It is difficult to conceive of a candidate that dissents from his or her party’s abortion position ever receiving the presidential nomination. Democrats would likely add seemingly unlimited support for unions to that list and Republicans would have to add support for seemingly endless tax cuts.

But torture is not on that list.

It is worth remembering that one of the Republicans’ harshest critics of torture and sponsor of a major piece of legislation barring the use of torture was also the party’s 2008 Presidential nominee, John McCain. And McCain’s personal connection to the torture issue cannot be ignored. Yet somehow, Eric manages to go through his whole argument about conservatives alleged reflexive and mandatory love for torture and its effects without even mentioning the 2008 Republican presidential candidate. This is a curious omission. And while it would have been fair to point out that McCain’s anti-torture position was de-emphasized badly during the campaign, it doesn’t seem quite fully honest to simply blow past his involvement in the issue without a mention while claiming that conservatives love torture so much that they would probably refuse to nominate anyone who said it was contrary to our values like Petreaus did.

I also think that Eric errs by ripping the 2008 election out of context and applying its rhetoric presumptively to the 2012 contest. Democrats made the centerpiece of the election not McCain, but Bush. And some Republican candidates like Romney went clumsily overboard trying to use the old “Democrats are weak on defense” card, thus forcing them to extreme positions when Obama inconveniently refused to oblige them by being sufficiently milquetoast. To assume that Republicans would repeat their errors may be plausible, but it is far short of assuming that those errors are indications of conservatives’ core beliefs that are closed off to modification or compromise.  It is likely that new issues will arise by 2012 (the bailout economy, anyone?) and old issues will be interpreted and pursued in new ways.  It is rather narrow to assume that 2008=2012.

The equation of torture and conservatism relies on stereotype more than an accurate reflection of conservatives’ core beliefs. Yes, it is true that several conservative candidates made statements endorsing Gitmo and even waterboarding, but actually talking to conservatives (instead of simply taking as truth whatever some ThinkProgress or Newshoggers writers say about them) shows a slightly more nuanced interpretation. In short, even conservatives who endorse waterboarding would say that they oppose torture, simply because they do not agree that waterboarding is torture in the first place. While I disagree with their argument (anyone who has experienced drowning first-hand would, in my opinion), it is not completely unfounded. At the point that waterboarding is included in the training of U.S. soldiers, airmen, and covert ops agents, it seems as least open to question whether it is torture in the same sense as tearing someone’s fingernails out with pliers.

In fact, the more one talks to conservatives on this very issue (and I have had great opportunity to do so both online and in classrooms), the more one finds that any apparent embrace of torture is really an emotional reaction to the despicable nature of al-Qaeda as an enemy. It really just boils down to a belief that somehow they don’t deserve basic legal and civil rights. I strongly disagree with that position, but it is not impossible to understand as an emotional reaction. And when they are forced to think and talk about it in detail, they almost always weaken their position, especially when confronted with talk about the real values of conservatism as well as the values of Christianity that underlie much of conservatism. But Eric’s characterization does not seem to comprehend these aspects of conservative culture.  If it is only a lack of exposure, we can hope Eric’s presence at PoliGazette can help him come to at least a more complicated critique of conservatism.

There is much that is ill in conservative political culture these days. For example, they seem to have internalized a mirror image of the culture of reflexive opposition that dominated the left during the Bush administration and the result has left them continuing to wander in the wilderness politically. And many conservatives continue to conflate religious dogma with public policy that makes it difficult for them to compete politically, particularly among more secular and socially tolerant (even indulgent) younger voters. Conservatism has difficult struggles ahead.

But Eric’s claim that conservatives endorse torture as a mandatory position among their candidates is simply not true.