Political rivalry is one thing but personal smear campaigns scrape the barrel of political infighting.

As one of a handful of religion professors in the U.S. who study, write, and teach about conservative Christianity and politics, I am all too aware of the real meaning of the list and of its purpose. Promoted by Turning Point USA, the list is not simply designed to expose professors who discriminate; it is designed to silence and smear.

My theory on smear pieces is try and win 'em over.

When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.

For those uninitiated in the art of guerrilla war tactics: Smear campaigns never run fair or square. So just to set the record straight: I'm not a drug addict, I don't smoke or drink and I'm most definitely not a lesbian.

In the United States, the government has no business entering the marketplace of ideas to establish an arbiter of what is false, misleading, or a political smear.

I acknowledge the right of the authorities and the press to satisfy themselves as to whether I am the anthrax mailer. This does not, however, give them the right to smear me and gratuitously make a wasteland of my life in the process. I will not be railroaded.

I know politics is emotionally brutal; I've already had experience with the reality of smear campaigns, so I understand there will not be a path of roses laid before me.

The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on!

There is no need to smear my name or to defame my character for the sake of news.

If bitter party name-calling turns people off then smear politics just destroys all credibility in the aims of politicians, the role of political parties and the political process itself.

Sometimes, anonymous sources, when merely stating opinions or running a smear campaign, are certainly cowards.

Liberal members of Congress and their media allies are furious with Attorney General William Barr because he blew up the Mueller report smear job before it was out of the box.

I am by no means suggesting that everyone who uses the neocon label is doing so as an anti-Semitic smear, but the word has been used often enough in that ugly context that it should make any person of goodwill think twice before employing it.

Do you know people on the Right who are tolerant of people who are for gay marriage and are pro-choice? I actually do, plenty of them. When there is a disagreement, I see way more people on the Right... more often willing to agree to disagree rather than to de-friend or to smear.

Mainstream America, in the long run, will always stand for highly qualified, impartial judges and for a fair process and for senators who do their jobs and vote - not who unfairly smear good men like Judge Alito.

I invent by analogy. I thought, 'It's commonplace that you can mix colors, smear them together to get new emerging colors. Likewise, you can mix radio waves to get new frequencies.' So, I wondered, 'Why can't you mix sound to get new sounds?'

I don't particularly want to smear myself into a hillside.

I would borrow my mom's red Borghese lipstick and smear it on like a clown!

We saw Jesse Jackson the victim of a smear campaign. People remember the Dean scream that was used against Howard Dean as a peace candidate who was doing well. So, in many ways, the Democratic Party creates campaigns that fake Left while it moves Right and becomes more corporatist, more militarist, more imperialist.