Ukip has spent the last twenty years outside the political tent pissing in, yet now they are stepping inside of the big top they don't seem to keen on getting a warm yellow drenching.
Unfair? Ed Miliband can't take a dump with being accused of pandering to the Unions.
Given the opportunity of entering the political arena with the big boys and girls it's naive not to expect higher level of scrutiny. As the big three know too well, from the car you drive to the school you send your children to, everything is fair game for the press.
Had Ukip taken a principled stand against what they now describe as a witch-hunt when it happened to its larger rivals, I might have more sympathy. Yet, as anyone who has gone to that fifth circle of hell that is the Daily Mail comments section will have seen, UKIP supporters wriggle in delight at such stories.
From the ground up they have thrown much muck about the perceived corruption of mainstream politics. Scrutiny is a weapon against such corruption so you would think they would have taken this with a stiff upper lip.
Is this a crazed witch-hunt when it finds actual witches on a daily basis? Be it racist comments or dodgy friends in the EU, it paints a picture of an operationally incompetent far-right party.
Nigel Farage may try to distance himself by claiming these aren't high profile members. For a party with no elected MPs these men and women, who they have selected to represent them in the forthcoming Euro and Local Government elections, must be considered as leading figures.
Having selected Roger Helmer to run in their most important bid for an elected MP yet, the Newark By-Election, you would assume that this is somebody representative of the best of UKIP, perhaps only second to its leader. With that in mind it's worth reviewing his views on homosexuality, rape and climate change.
As Ukip desperately fire fight this stream of negative stories about its choice of candidates it pleads that it is the only party to have a ban on former BNP members. Perhaps they need to reflect on why they are attracting such people.
Was it the posters or the rhetoric that made people with bigoted views feel at home in UKIP? Worryingly if these are their best members, those they saw fit to put up for election, what lies beneath its surface?
As Nigel Farage was taken apart in the space of twenty minutes on LBC this week it's evident the problems go right to the top. Expenses issues, hypocrisy and dubious use of stats, the stuff of mainstream political failure were clearly exposed.
If they are going to get bigger the questions are going to get tougher, having had two decades to prepare for this it's remarkable they seem so disorganised.
If they feel this is a hatchet job, a smear campaign, well get use to it because you're in the big leagues now and the less you're made of shit the harder it is to smear you.