WASHINGTON — President Obama’s push for a new “middle-class economics” may go nowhere in Congress, but his ambitious array of proposals to raise stagnant incomes and provide more government support for struggling working families will frame his last two years in office and help make the politics of rich and poor a central issue in the campaign to succeed him.

With the economy finally on more solid ground, even leading Republicans, on Capitol Hill and on the nascent 2016 presidential campaign front, are tempering complaints about overall economic growth and refocusing on the more intractable problem of income inequality.

Mitt Romney, vowing a campaign to “end the scourge of poverty” if he runs for president a third time, has backed raising the minimum wage over the wishes of congressional leaders.

Similarly, Jeb Bush’s new “super PAC,” announced with the fanfare of a presidential declaration, proclaimed, “While the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top earners, they’ve been a lost decade for the rest of America.”