Pandering to voters in Florida yesterday, Newt announced his intent to build a lunar base: "When they have 13,000 Americans living on the moon, they can petition to become a state." Noreen Malone smirks:
In case you read that (which, by the way, Newt says will happen by the end of his second term) and thought, I mean, dude, we just shut down our shuttle program. Do you know how much money that will cost? Aren't you supposed to be the tea party's guy? And don't we have some problems with the way things are going these days on Earth? …. well, Newt has an answer for you, ye of little faith. " I accept the charge that I am an American, and Americans instinctively are grandiose." Who's on his speech-writing team, Saul Bellow and Buzz Lightyear?
Weigel thinks the ploy is savvy:
Gingrich proposed it in his 1984 futurist manifesto Window of Opportunity, published during his third term in the House. In a classic Gingrichian touch, the moon colony's statehood would be made possible by a "Northwest Ordinance for Space." His "space sex" theorizing and space mirror mathematics got more attention, but the moon idea; that was the big one. He's never backed down from it. Why would he? Why would he do it in Florida? We call this chunk of the state the "space coast" for a reason, ably explained by Paul Barrett in a great 2010 piece about the local recession.
Jim Newell looks ahead:
What about Mars? "Gingrich also said he would push to develop propulsion technology that would get man to Mars." He would merely "develop" the project. Such a cop-out.
The Dish 