That is exactly what they are, the sewer rats of journalism.
OK, did the “opposition research” have its genesis within one of the current GOP primary candidate camps, who then did the deal with the devil and got ultra liberal, muckracking Politico involved? Or was this something reverse engineered, ie. Politico was stirring up on its own, and in the process, somebody in one of the GOP primary candidate camps picked it up by hearsay and started to talk open mic (now that we have a paper trail of it on twitter pre-facto)? Or helped stoke the fire? Something stinks here, I don’t like it. Something is realllllly fishy here.