The elders would often warn about the dog that brings a bone. It references to the a person who brings vicious gossip will also carry away gossip to use against you at some point. In troublesome times the case of the "dog" that brings the bone will carry away an entire skeleton.
Let this be a warning to all sides and everyone in between when it comes to the nastiness in politics these days. If someone brings vicious gossip to use against another candidate, tell them, "Thanks but no thanks. That's not our style. We prefer to run a clean campaign" This is the only way to stand up to and put the breaks on these malicious attacks against any opponent.
Any bones these people bring pretending to be your friend, at the same time they're gathering up whatever info they can to use against you at some future date. They will make you beholding to them because of the bones they bring, and when you don't deliver or follow through on their demands they will turn on you.
When all sides come to a consensus and agree on this, those "dogs" that bring bones and carry away skeletons will disappear into the darkness with tucked tails, never to be seen or heard from again until they find another gullible victim.
Like minded people are disgusted by all the base and ugly viciousness in politics today. None of it has any true value or purpose other than to bring someone down. As Booker T. Washington and later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "You can't keep a man down without staying down beside him."
Brenda Washington