Over on RedState, I see a reader describe his interaction with the NRA, urging them not to endorse Harry Reid; the reader brings up Reid’s comment about Iraq, that “the war is lost.”
Reid’s comment was egregious, but that doesn’t make it relevant to the NRA’s endorsement decision. The NRA endorsement says nothing about a candidate’s conservatism, good judgment on foreign policy or other non-gun issues, character, wisdom, reliability, or anything else other than whether they voted the correct way on Second Amendment issues.
As I understand it, the NRA Political Victory Fund’s endorsement is a matter of a formula. They have certain votes that they “score,” and that is all that goes into the grade. (The NRA-PVF obviously has more discretion in where they choose to spend their funds, and which candidates to most actively and loudly support through donations, letters, and mailers to NRA members, etc.) When there is a tie between an A-rated incumbent and an A-rated challenger, they endorse the incumbent; in their eyes, a proven record outweighs any promise.
Over at RedState, Erick Erickson argues that the organization ought to be endorsing Sharron Angle. If the purpose of the NRA was to elect the best overall candidate or the most conservative candidate, he’s absolutely right. But like it or not, that’s not how they see their jobs. They see their purpose as helping the best candidate on the issue of gun rights, no matter what. Also fundamental to the NRA’s sense of mission is their reputation as a steadfast ally and the perception that they stick with their friends through thick and thin, through good polls and bad. Harry Reid may look increasingly toasty in Nevada, but the thinking within the NRA is that likelihood of defeat cannot be a sufficient reason to abandon a candidate they endorsed last cycle.
One of the reasons NRA’s candidate grades deviate from those of other gun groups like Gun Owners for America is that GOA grades on a broader spectrum of votes that are more tangentially related to the gun issue, like the confirmation votes for Eric Holder, Cass Sunstein, Harold Koh, and the health-care bill. The NRA is not enamored with Eric Holder, but it was pretty clear that almost all Democrats and a lot of Republicans would give deference to President Obama on his choice of attorney general; the group sees little reason for scoring votes that are almost pro forma, and hurting candidates who would otherwise have a perfect record.
(We can argue whether the organization ought to make their endorsements in this manner; as noted yesterday, I would hate to see the NRA turn into a lifeline for otherwise doomed liberal Democrat incumbents. But the organization is being consistent in their manner of determining who they support and endorse.)
This system is putting the NRA in a bit of a tough spot, because some of the cycle’s least popular incumbents have sterling or near-sterling records on the gun issue, and have given the organization no easy reason to drop their endorsement under established criteria. Besides Reid, there’s Ohio governor Ted Strickland, presiding over a long stretch of economic hard times in his state, and one of the 2010 candidates most loathed by the conservative grassroots, Charlie Crist.
However, my understanding is that NRA endorsements of independents or third-party candidates are exceptionally rare; I have yet to encounter any examples. And because Crist is not technically an incumbent in this race — he’s a governor who’s aiming to switch to becoming a senator — they may be able to conclude that his departure from the party and plethora of sudden policy reversals make him a lawmaker that Florida gun owners just can’t rely on.