Hominem (abusive), argumentum ad
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bearing on the issue under consideration. The use of personal attacks to cast doubt on the arguer's judgement gives one possible avenue. Lawyers when cross-examining hostile witnesses tread a fine line between 'establishing the character of a witness' and a simple ad hominem abusive to discredit the testimony. Similarly, the use of witnesses on the character of the accused can often venture over the line into the territory of the fallacy. The political arena is fertile territory in which some fallacies grow like weeds and others like carefully cultivated blossoms. The ad hominem abusive is one of the staples of parliamentary question-time.
/ would remind the House that when my questioner was in office unemployment and inflation doubled, and wages went down almost as fast as prices went up. And he has the temerity to ask me about the future of the mining industry. (No comment, which is what he is saying in a more circumlocutious form.)
Some of the poor quality of parliamentary debate can be laid at the door of the press. So long as there are sycophantic journalists prepared to praise an ordinary ad hominem abusive as a 'splendid riposte' there will be politicians labouring through the midnight hours to compose such gems as 'like being savaged by a dead sheep'. They perform to their audience. The rules to remember when committing this fallacy are that the hostile material should, wherever possible, be introduced with apparent reluctance, and it should be made to bear on the question of whether your opponent deserves consideration by such a worthy and serious audience as you are both addressing.