Moonbase Gingrich

So this is what's left of the Republican Party?

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is promising to establish a permanent base on the moon by 2020 if he's elected.

Gingrich, the former House speaker, told an overflow crowd gathered on Florida's space coast Wednesday that he wants to develop a robust commercial space industry in line with the airline boom of the 1930s. He also wants to expand exploration of Mars.

The pronouncements appeared to thrill the crowd of roughly 700 people. Florida's space coast is still suffering from a recent round of federal cuts to the space program.

Comments

[copinacus]

And why not, Publius. It can easily be paid for with the money we are pissing down a hole with "green" programmes.
Dare to be great for pete's sake.

[John Chittick]

As Steyn said in his put-down, the only thing that will reach the moon from the US is their debt ceiling. Romney is re-branding the GOP about the same as the old GOP while Newt is a loose canon firing everywhere from right on-target to the Twilight zone. Ron Paul won't break out into double digits nationally so there we are. Buy your nose plugs before there is a run on them.

[copinacus]

Sorry but when I see Steyn, Coulter, Hewitt, the National Review, in bed with Daddy Warbucks, and swearing he's "electible", Newt's moonbase makes far more sense to me.

[John Chittick]

I don't think it's just an American phenomenon (think anglosphere) but have you noticed that the left tends to deify their candidate no matter how despicable, while conservatives can barely tolerate who they have to vote for? Then you move into the quadrant of the Ron Paul libertarian / neo-isolationists and it is near deification again (yet vilified by the "mainstream" conservatives). Could it be that all the internal contradictions in conservative thinking (primarily in the role of government) come out and no one candidate can stand for all of them?

[copinacus]

Yeah, I guess you're right. Trying to apply classical liberal principles from the time of steam, telegraph poles, the ethics of Chesterton, the morality of....well, Kipling, to the wireless 21st century where 20 somethings go from zero to 50 billion in a couple of years aint too easy.
And besides most of us have been so brainwashed by more than a half century of progressivism that we are inclined to hide our Ayn Rand under the mattress
when company visits.

[Cytotoxic]

The reason conservatives despise all their candidates is that there is no such thing as conservatism. It's a bunch of crap. Conservatism is right-wing relativism. That's it. Libertarians are generally elated with Ron Paul because he's the only high-profile candidate to represent them in...almost forever.

Romney sucks, but he's still better than Gingrich. Way it's looking, Obama will be re-elected and that may be for the best.

[copinacus]

To cut through all the crap, the books, the speeches, the programmes the simple litmus test is whether it affects "the people" or whether it affects the person.
If it affects an individual then it is considered conservative. If it affects "the people" then it is progressive and collectivist.