My take on that
I saw the luddites come flooding out when he made the Mars speech. Sadly some of those are Bush voters. You can bet the dems would jump on him for mentioning it.
The initiative is not an earth shaking pronouncement from the standpoint of the budget. He will only be requesting a small increase for NASA. The main thing is the redirection of NASA away from LEO BS.
Other than folks of our type, the country is probably not in the mood for a big talk fest on any tkind of space program. We can sneak through the piddling increase he wants and proceed in the direction he outlined without getting the natives restless.
Maybe the opportunity to make it a priority will materialize in the next term.