Obama stumps to base in Richmond

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama traveled to Richmond, Virginia on Friday to aggressively promote the $447 billion jobs stimulus he announced at Thursday’s rare joint session of Congress.

He delivered the pitch with more passion, and generated more enthusiasm, with an audience of supporters. Yet there’s little or no agreement about whether his plan will increase long-term support among critical, swing-voting independents. Two Thursday night focus groups, one in Richmond and one in Atlanta, Ga., produced sharply different reactions to the president’s jobs plan.

“We’ve got to give [Republicans] a little help to do the right thing, so I’m asking you all to lift up their voices … call [them], email, I want to tweet, to fax, to visit, Facebook, send a carrier pigeon,” a fired-up Obama told the Richmond crowd.

Friday’s speech included Obama’s frequent stump-speech claim that GOP legislators are unpatriotic, and should be punished at the ballot box for stopping the economic recovery promised by his policies. The economy “has stalled,” he said, and recovery “will only happen if they set politics aside to deal with America’s problems.”

The crowd was largely made up of Obama supporters. Many in the audience were professionals or students at the private university where attendance costs $52,000 a year, and most of the people sitting immediately behind the president were African-American women. One woman shouted “We love you Barack!” prompting him to respond, “I love you back!”