The past week saw another three candidates join the race for the Republican nomination for president.  More will follow. It is a time of danger and opportunity for candidates. The bubble of isolation that keeps candidates from spontaneous and natural contact with the public has not yet enveloped them.

The candidates and their allies are not yet spending millions with ads that boost themselves and strip the bark off opponents. The early delegate contests in Iowa and New Hampshire require all the candidates to engage in considerable small scale campaigning for the next several months.

You don’t need to go to Iowa or New Hampshire to see the candidates. They are traveling the nation to raise money and woo party leaders. In order to win some local media attention, candidates will hold events open to the public. Here lies the danger and opportunity.

The clutch of candidates competing for money, endorsements and name recognition is still testing and refining their messages. The ones who will make it through the sieves that narrow the field need to make their evolving pitches on ordinary party members. The processes requires them to be less guarded than they will be in the set pieces that dominate later stages of the contest. Activists and engaged voters like to examine their suitors in person.

A roomful of party activists is likely to pose a wider range of questions than a pack of reporters from national media outlets fixated on the horse race. Voters, not just Republican ones, on any given day may ask about local control of education, generous Hollywood tax credits, crony capitalism, and our role in rescuing refugees in leaking boats stranded in the Mediterranean Sea. Others might, for example, ask what a candidate would do to speed the FDA’s approval process of lifesaving drugs. Someone in an audience this week may want to know why government spends so much on Baltimore while misery there refuses to abate.

Those might be asked at one evening event. The audience will expect answers. Serious ones. Responses laden with clichés, jargon and blame won’t persuade. Serving a cocktail of substance and some spark will.

Some questions can sound rude. When’s the last time you drove yourself to work? How many private jets have you flown on in the past year? Who owned them? Do you think we live in a just society? When should someone go to jail for possessing or using marijuana? Audiences, even friendly ones, grow restive at evasive responses.

Republicans seem to be responding to candidates who are outsiders. They are suspicious of the chummy bipartisan relationships that thrive on influence and bossy, bigger government, no matter which party is in power.

A burgeoning Washington scandal provides an easy way to test a candidate’s commitment to busting up cozy Washington arrangements that conspire against the public interest. Boorish U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) finds himself in an unforgiving spotlight over his mixing of his public trust with private pleasures.

Politico reported in April that Shuster, head of the powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has been engaged in a “personal relationship” with airline industry lobbyist Shelley Rubino. She’s a Democratic insider who enjoys a high-ranking and lucrative job at Airlines for America, a trade organization with a lot of important business in front of Shuster’s committee.

Shuster says Rubino does not lobby him. Insert guffaw here. “I think people in this town know my integrity level,” Shuster said at an event hosted by National Journal. “I’m going to be at the table. I’ve got a lot of stakeholders.” They do know Shuster’s level of integrity and can figure out Rubino’s, too. This is everything Americans hate about Washington. It’s insiders unbound.

You don’t need a masters in soothsaying to know the Shuster-Rubino romance is no good for the public. It provides a revealing test for Republican presidential candidates. Will they condemn this unseemly arrangement? What are the boundaries between public trust and private lust for elected officials? Should Shuster resign his coveted chairmanship?

The candidates’ answers on this insiders’ delight will tell you which side of the great divide between the bipartisan beltway trough and the rest of us he or she dwells.