In the article, "President Obama to Speak Today at the University of Kansas" (link to article) it discusses how the president has already visited two "red" Republican states since his State of the Union address. One of these states is Kansas and the other is Idaho. This was actually the first time that President Obama visited Idaho as president. By visiting these states, he is trying to rally support for the middle-class economics that he spoke about in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday. According to Josh Earnest, a White House press secretary, states like Idaho and Kansas are examples of states who already support these ideas, which is why President Obama chose to visit them. He wants to show that there is Republican support for many of the programs that the president wants to implement. Later on in the article it also stated that the president would like to visit South Dakota, Utah, and South Carolina (the only three states that he has not visited yet) before his presidency ends.
I am not surprised that the president chose to visit these states right after his State of the Union address. He obviously needs more support from Republicans if he wants any of the ideas that he talked about in his speech to work out. I know that a lot of people do not agree with many of the ideas that the president spoke about on Tuesday, so it will be interesting to see if these visits have any impact on how much support the president receives.
The president is trying his best to get his way. I wonder how progressive our Congress would be though if he did not try to get his way. It is a highly red Congress and many of them have similar economic ideals. The middle class is important to boost our stalling economy, but I do not think it is enough.
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