One of the most harmful trends in American politics is the strategy of scoring. Many groups do this, the NRA, the anti-tax lobby, the anti-abortion lobby, and others.
For example, the NRA (National Rifle Association--once a lobbying group for hunters and gun safety, but now pretty narrowly focused on blocking any regulation that might even slightly affect the business of a few powerful gunmerchants--scores on a wide range of legislation, ranging from entirely reasonable background checks, to mythical plots by the UN and others to confiscate the guns of law abiding Americans. You pretty much have to be a nutjob to score 100%, but there are a number of politicians who manage to pull it off and most Republicans come pretty close. If you earn too low a score, the NRA will campaign against you, and even the threat of such attacks scares most politicians from making reasonable choices.
The problem is that scoring tends to destroy nuance. Low information voters see the single number, usually a percentage, and if they think they agree with the goals of the organization, they vote for the candidate that scores highest. The fact that the NRA is not serving the interests of gun owners and hunters, and hasn't for decades, is lost. This is exactly what NRA leadership has in mind. They can control the conversation if anyone representing the vast majority is afraid to speak.
Gun safety regulations are supported by vast majorities, as are universal background checks. But the NRA is so single minded in their opposition to any regulation at all, that they will not tolerate even the slightest breaking of ranks. For example, in 2000, Smith and Wesson agreed to implement locking mechanisms, magazine size limits, and safety testing--all industry firsts, and likely to increase sales of their products in the long term. NRA responded with a boycott that effectively put the company out of business. New ownership reversed the plan, and the name and products of this venerable gunmaker are back on the market, albeit with much less market share.
In December 2012, a 20 year old with a long history of mental health issues killed his mother*, 26 very young school children and their teachers, and finally himself. Coming close on the heels of several other massacres of children by people with clear histories of mental health problems, legislation requring universal background checks got farther than it ever had before. Such background checks poll in excess of 90%, including strong majorities of NRA members. But the NRA leadership is against it, and they threatened congress, who rejected the legislation.
The anti-tax lobby, led by Grover Norquist's "Americans for Tax Reform", uses the same strategy. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes, but nearly all of us are willing to help poor children get food. But the scoring strategy Norquist applies does not countenance any such reasonableness. If people understood what he was up to, he would have support from a few hundred like-minded lunatics and find himself shouting into the wind. But because he hides behind a simple score, and has lots of money from a few anti-tax rich folks to apply to his campaigns, very few republicans will go against him. A few did in 2012. Let's hope it's the start of a trend.
There are lots more groups that do this. Anti-abortion groups conflate reasonable objections to people using abortion as contraception with completely unreasonable objections to necessary medical procedures. Climate change denialists conflate NIMBY and tax related objections to government subsidies of green power with dire warnings about die-offs, sea level rise, and more. et cetera. Each of these groups is funded by some folks with deep pockets, who are mainly interested in protecting an existing, very profitable business, and not really the good of anybody, apart from their own deep pockets.
I don't know how to stop scoring. At one level, it's a good thing, ostensibly helping low information voters. But because extremists (mostly, but not quite entirely on the far right), have figured out how to use it to their advantage, something needs to be done.
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* Adam Lanza's mother had apparently found that her troubled son was calmest when playing with guns and firing them on the range. So she encouraged his obsession with guns.
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