These quotations may be inserted or alluded to in negative political ads to discredit the character or intellectual ability of the originator.
These quotations are compiled into books or posted on the internet and are repeated in other contexts such as in talk radio or in the United States by stand-up comedians in late-night television monologues.
There are various common categories of quotations: malapropisms or grammatical errors, exaggerations about past achievements, lack of conviction, consorting with the enemy, moral turpitude, indifference towards victims of crime, racist or discriminatory, etc.
[1] With the availability of inexpensive computers and the widespread use of the Internet, it has become easy for anyone to accumulate and distribute these quotation lists.
Like the "Yogiisms" of baseball great Yogi Berra, or the Colemanballs collected by Private Eye, a damaging quotation purports to give insight into the thinking of the speaker, frequently a politician or of the politicians or political groups that used it as means of attack.