Politics, by its very nature, has zero-to-few objectively right answers. Sure I think guns are rampant and abortions are ok, but reasonable people can disagree with me and have valid points. And then we have to come together and someone's perspective has to lose.
As such, politicians are rarely trying to find the "truth" or "correct" outcome. They too have opinions and steadfastly defend those. The key difference here is there's no progress towards an ideal outcome, there's just progress towards convincing others their individual outcome is right. In other words, "I want to win the argument", not "I want to get it right".
In an environment like that, there's little incentive to allow another's perspectives to come in play, and any attempt by another to challenge a fundamentally subjective opinion will trigger reactions of personal attack. And it's fair, an individual's opinion is being attacked, thus it is, to some degree, personal.
And that is why political debates and discussions devolve into shouting matches and name-calling.
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