Top state and national Republican leaders hammered President Barack Obama and questioned his motives for a planned bus tour of upstate New York to discuss access to higher education. The tour begins in Buffalo on Thursday.
Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, called Mr. Obama’s planned trip a “lame duck bus tour," and predicted that the president would focus on the same old policies that he says haven't worked.
“You can be sure that the president will really take every single opportunity he can to do what he does best,” said Priebus. “Which is talk and talk and talk.”
New York State GOP Chair Ed Cox says the trip is really about shoring up Democratic support in key congressional districts that have the potential to swing between the two parties in recent elections.
“There are three congressional districts that I’m sure he’s hoping to take back,” said Cox, who claims it will not happen in 2014.
Chairman Cox, who is a former Trustee of the State University of New York, praised Mr. Obama for visiting state university campuses in Buffalo and Binghamton, but says most graduates move to states that have Republican governors and a better economy.