Gingrich shoots for the moon

Do you remember where you were the day Newt Gingrich called for an actual American state, on the moon? He’d certainly like you to treasure the moment.

“I want you to help me in Florida and across the country, so you can someday say you were there the day it was announced that we’d have commercial space, moon colony, and moving towards Mars,” he declared – promising a permanent lunar base by the end of his second term.

Newt certainly likes a big idea. And space could well be a red hot Republican issue right now – what with Barack Obama having cancelled Bush’s moon landing scheme back in 2010, and presiding over the end of the shuttle programme.

And to be fair to Gingrich, he has taken a keen interest in the cosmos for decades, inside and outside of Congress. Six years ago he told the Space Review he’d first become interested during the Sputnik era – admitting that he “began reading Missiles and Rockets magazine when I was in the 8th grade.” From teenager to wannabe space cadet: now we know where the idea of that moon colony was first born.

Jobs in space

But space travel isn’t just one of Newt’s favourite topics – it’s politically charged down in Florida, where the prospect of grand new projects could mean thousands of jobs, in an area hit hard by the last few years of retrenchment. Robert Whelen, vice-president of a local tech company, told reporters that cuts in Nasa funding over the last few years had meant a loss of 19,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Not that Gingrich wants to give more money to Nasa itself: that smacks too much of Big Government and unwieldy red-tape, or as he put it in a primary debate back in June: “Nasa has become an absolute case study in why bureaucracy can’t innovate.” Instead he favours offering prize money to private companies to do all the necessary research.

Does that mean I’m visionary? You betcha. Newt Gingrich

There’s considerable scepticism over whether prize money would actually work to incentivise such a bold, new frontier. For Newt doesn’t just want a colony on the moon – he told the crowd in Cocoa that once 13,000 Americans were living up there, they could petition to become a state. I guess that’s one way of ramping up your convention delegates. And trips to Mars by 2020 are also on his agenda.

To the White House, and beyond?

“Does that mean I’m visionary? You betcha,” he declared, before comparing himself to Lincoln, the Wright Brothers, and John F Kennedy.

Newt Gingrich, then, is pinning his hopes on what scientists call “indefinite propulsion”, to boldly go where no presidential hopeful has gone before. Whether or not it’s all just a flight of fancy depends, not just on the voters on Florida’s Space Coast, but the political universe beyond.

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News.