Has The NRA Gone Off Its Collective Nut?

Why would they endorse Dirty Harry Reid over the woman who's going to retire him, Republican Sharon Angle?  How can they trust a filthy McNasty crook like Pencil-Neck to keep his word to them on anything?

The truth is, they can't.  But Jim Geraghty, who does a great deal of podcast guest spots with the NRA, isn't surprised:

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....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.

Well, my friends, that's the risk you take by inviting single-issue groups into the Big Tent.  I recall feeling a similar degree of dismay when most of my fellow evangelicals rallied around Mike F'ing Huckabee in the '08 GOP primaries, a man who was not inaccurately or unfairly described as "the John Edwards of the Republican Party" (on domestic policy, not knocking up hookers while the old ball & chain is wasting away from breast cancer).  Abortion and sodomarriage are mortal moral issue threats to American culture and polity, but they're not the ONLY such threats.  But to more Christians than I would have imagined, they are.

But then I've never been a single-issue guy.  Cold War foreign policy was my on-ramp to political junkiehood, but it didn't stay that way.  I was like...well, me in at a smorgasbord.  I tried everything and liked it all.  I could no more narrow everything down to one issue than I can easily loose fifty pounds (Ten is the farthest I've gotten, and that was after my most recent bout of the dry heaves).

But that's not how the NRA sees its job, a view that now apparently includes getting bought off by the Donk Poliburo on more than one recent occasion.  And losing the strategic sense to realize that knocking off Dirty Harry could determine whether the party of gun rights regains majority control of the U.S. Senate.

One could say their view of their jobs is in need of seroius adjustment.  But as I do not belong to the NRA, it's not like I have any token stroke with 'em.