The calibre of candidates a political party selects to contest elections tells us much about its character and priorities. They reflect its heart and soul, its motivations and ambitions.
That is why Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has been facing particular questions over a number of the candidates campaigning for the DUP in Thursday's local government elections.
Sir Jeffrey has given the impression that he was not only personally involved in the selection process but that the DUP also had an abundance of applicants from which to choose the 152 candidates it is running across the 11 councils.
This makes it all the more troubling that Sir Jeffrey and the DUP officers see nothing wrong in picking Ian McLaughlin to represent the party as a Belfast City Council candidate.
Mr McLaughlin has represented the UDA-aligned UPRG in the Shankill area, a role which saw him, for example, join Nigel Dodds and Peter Robinson in making representations to the Parades Commission. The close link between the UPRG and the UDA - an illegal paramilitary organisation which terrorises and seeks to control loyalist districts - alone ought to be concerning, and raises a wider issue of the nature of the DUP's relationship with extreme loyalist elements.
But it is Mr McLaughlin's alleged association with the now deleted 'West Belfast UPRG' Twitter account which is most controversial. The vile account was notorious as a reservoir of sectarianism, racism and misogyny. Curiously, it disappeared around the time Mr McLaughlin was announced as a DUP candidate.
Though it is unclear how much due diligence he conducted, Sir Jeffrey says Mr McLaughlin has personally told him he wasn't involved in the offensive Twitter account. He appears to believe that should be the end of the matter and that it merits no further inquiry.
The DUP leader has also struggled to give convincing answers about several other of his representatives.
These include Tyler Hoey in Mid and East Antrim. He used his social media to mock the Greysteel massacre, in which UDA gunmen killed eight people in 1993, and the deaths of 39 Vietnamese immigrants who were found dead in a trailer at Dover docks in 2019.
Sir Jeffrey has brushed off criticism of Mr Hoey by presenting them as youthful indiscretions; Mr Hoey is 29, and he was posting offensive material when he was 26.
Other DUP candidates facing criticism include Marc Collins in Mid and East Antrim and Bradley Ferguson in Belfast.
Sir Jeffrey puts great store in the DUP's 'code of conduct' in dealing with these matters; others will understandably be less than reassured and alarmed at the party's willingness to tolerate such attitudes.
