Government, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

Into the carefully scripted Republican convention has come a complication: a natural disaster that not only distracts attention from Mitt Romney but sets up a collision with a fundamental tenet of today's GOP.

The battle between Republicans and Democrats over the size and scope of the U.S. government has put federal workers — their numbers, their pay and their benefits — at center stage this campaign season.

The answer is no. And that goes for presidential candidates too.

Five of the Republican Party's leading presidential contenders traveled to South Carolina on Labor Day to kiss the ring of tea party kingmaker Jim DeMint at a first-of-its-kind forum devoted to the Constitution and the role of government.