Four years ago, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (known now as Joe the Plumber) asked a simple question of the then-Sen. Barack Obama about his small-business tax policy. After a lengthy explanation, Mr. Obama concluded his reply by saying, "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everyone."
The career change from Joe the Plumber to Joe the Congressman isn't proving easy, but one of the most colorful figures of the 2008 election is giving it a go in the 2012 election cycle.
The campaign of Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney doesn't follow the practice of other major presidential candidates who have willingly identified their big-money fundraisers and the amounts they collect.
He is a burly, outspoken, working man's icon, plucked from obscurity during the 2008 presidential election cycle when he was lauded by Republicans for taking on candidate Barack Obama. Four years later, the Ohio native is mounting his own Republican bid to unseat a 15-term incumbent Democratic congresswoman.
In a bitter battle of liberal Democratic heavyweights, Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur prevailed over longtime friend and fellow incumbent Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Tuesday's primary in their newly drawn and combined congressional district.
OK, Washington joke: Grover Norquist walks into his downtown office. There's a bronze bust of Ronald Reagan, a towering stack of books, and on the windowsill of the nation's most powerful anti-tax activist rests an oversized front page from the Onion, a satirical newspaper.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry hosted a group of top national Republican fundraisers Tuesday in Austin, leaving at least one of the 20 or so big-money bundlers in attendance convinced that he's going to jump into the presidential race.
It's official: Joe the Plumber supports Herman the Pizza Guy.
Donning their headsets and jumping right into the day's schedule, some 50 radio talk-show hosts sat around a downtown Washington hotel's suite of conference rooms last week at makeshift radio stations, laptops and microphones propped up on tables in front of them.
