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Reader question: Please explain “character assassination”, as in this sentence: “The only reason he won the (Republican) nomination is through character assassination.” My comments: From this, we infer that more than one person had participated in the race for nomination, representing the Republican Party and he won, beating all others. And he did so by personal attacks, bad mouthing rivals and focusing on their character flaws, true or false. In other words, by damaging their reputation. Assassination is the work of an assassin, someone who murders an important person, usually out of political motives. Character assassination, on the other hand, is, instead of physical murder, a kind of murder of a person’s character, or his good name. And if you kill (destroy) a person’s good reputation, then their political career is all but over because people don’t want someone without integrity to run a public office. It’s important to note that the work of the assassin is usually covert. It’s carefully planned but none of the work is carried out in the open and in broad day light because it’s usually sinister in motive. By resorting to assassination, they’ve probably run out of methods to accomplish their goals by fair means. Hence, by analogy and extension, we may conclude that character assassination may also be unfair and even sinister in motive. | 
