Opposition Research: What is it? Good or bad?

[Young Conservative]

I have recently gotten very interested in opposition research, and I was wondering if anyone here has ever been one or known someone involved. What does it entail? Do people really investigate a candidate's personal life and past all the way back to birth as people seem to assume or is it more following a paper trail and hoping to catch the candidate that way?

side note: Do you think opposition research is good or are we discouraging good candidates from entering by threatening to drag up everything they've ever done?

[HisGrace]

It's a normal part of campaigning and I really don't see the problem with it.

I once worked on a special case where I investigated a candidate's history of financial improprieties. There's a whole industry of independent contractors who put together files on candidates, though, that's usually not how it works as far as I know.

[dead0man]

You've got to assume anybody getting into politics knows this happens.  I think it's fine.  Why worry about good candidates getting discouraged?  A good candidate is not going to have done something in their past that would make 50%+1 of their constituents not vote for them.