Newt Gingrich: Visionary Genius (and NOT Opportunistic Narcissist)

Newt Gingrich is going to be the Republican nominee in this year's Presidential election. Just ask him, he will tell you that himself.

And when he wins, and he will, he will go on to win again in 2016. Again, just ask him. You can't be that confident without some serious insight, something that gives you knowledge of a secret weapon that would allow someone with such incredibly large negative polling numbers to defeat an incumbent during a year of an expanding economy, even if he can defeat the largely unliked Mittens by being the last Republican in the race whose last name isn't Romney.

I have been a Newt fan for years. After all, a man who would let the Federal government shut down due to budget impasse after feeling disrespected by Bill Clinton on Air Force One is a man who truly embodies the slogan "cunty first."

That he excuses his own multiple philanderings because he loves his country so much while leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton is simply a lesson in the importance of philosophical integrity. Bill Clinton wasn't impeached for having an affair, he was impeached for lying about the affair under oath in a civil lawsuit.

And Newt Gingrich has never ever lied about anything under oath. (That I can think of for this post.)

So I found it very exciting when Newt Gingrich, historian, proclaimed his vision of a manned lunar base by the end of his second Presidential term (January 2021). And this incredibly complicated vision, filled with what would normally be more than a decade of planning and preparation, wasn't just some "Hail Mary" pass he threw in Florida, near the hub of Florida's space industry, in an attempt to woo some voters to what appears to people not nearly as smart as Newt to be a dying campaign. We thought it was doomed when all of his staff quit months ago, and clearly we were wrong then too. Newt's campaign is like some chronic ailment, AIDS or diabetes; you can fight it and treat it, but it will still be there, trying to kill you.

A lunar colony, can you imagine? By the way, Newt loves to attack Obama (I should just stop there) and frequently describes some of Obama's speeches as have a distinctively Kenyan, anti-colonial tone to them. Which is a subtle way of reminding America that Obama is BLACK AND TOTALLY NOT AN AMERICAN AND NOT ELIGIBLE TO SERVE AS PRESIDENT. Presumably you understand that anti-colonial is bad. Sometimes the Obama speeches are just "anti-colonial" and the "Kenyan" is silent, like the T in Colbert.

But Newt is also a man who loves and respects the founding fathers. How can he do that if they were anti-colonialists but also anti-colonialism is bad? Because he's Newt Gingrich and he's so much smarter than you and there will be no follow-up questions, thank you.


So Newt Gingrich, future President, future moon colonizer, was bold enough to give us a specific timeline with a specific goal. A mere politician would have given one without the other "by the end of my second term we will be on our way to..." or "I vow to begin that process that will result in... (with only a vague end time)."

Clearly Newt is no mere politician.

But I'm hugely disappointed that Newt's incredibly bold vision for the future seems to have been forgotten. A Google search this morning shows results that are 5 or 6 days old, about the time of the Florida primary. I guess the vision is too complicated to share outside a state with a space industry, so I hope to hear more when he is courting Texas voters, because I know this is real and he will make it happen.

Here are some things I am super eager to find out:

• Who's going to do it? Newt wants to slash NASA's budget, and yet has an audacious vision that requires NASA's expertise.
• Who's going to pay for it? Newt wants to reduce the size of government, and hates taxes and deficits. What magical formula does Newt have to make this happen? The invention of the inter-webz only happened thanks to the generosity of Federal money (aka "pork") and the genius of Oscar winner Al Gore, and while its existence has prompted more than enough economic benefit to justify that money, I doubt you could go back in time and persuade American business geniuses to pro-actively fund the inter-webz on spec. "We will spend lots of money to invest in a company whose business model involves losing money shipping bags of pet food, but we will NOT create its infrastructure" you can almost hear them say.
• How do we get there? According to actual rocket scientists, the US does not currently have a vehicle that can fly to the moon. Of course the only person smarter than a rocket scientist is Newt Gingrich, so I want to know his plan: power ring, boom tube, transporter, or good old Kryptonian yellow sun strength?  Or maybe something out of the Marvel universe.
• And once we are there, then what? Are we creating some kind of modular, prefabricated thing that gets assembled on the moon? Or are we sending construction materials TO the moon and building there? Or are we going to mine the moon for the raw materials we need? And if so, how do we get the shit that's necessary to that up there? Only Newt Gingrich's mind knows all these details.
• Oh and how many people are needed on the moon to assemble, mine, etc.? 50? 500? 5,000? Who does he see in this role? Oh, wait, I already know this one: poor kids. That is a text book Newt Gingrich solution: put poor kids to work, so they won't be poor any more (never mind the absence of jobs for experienced adults, let alone children, Newt Gingrich won't be pestered by reality).
• And how are those kids going to breathe and eat? The lunar colony that is totally a real plan and not just something Newt Gingrich pulled out of his ass is going to be there forever. And it will be difficult to FedEx air, food and water to the moon (difficult, but not impossible, because once the opportunity is there, American business won't hesitate, just don't look for them to make their own opportunity, the way Libertarians think they do--even Atlas Shrugged, which I haven't actually read, has a lead character working in the rail industry with no reference to how that industry's existence relied on the very governmental assistance they disdain, but that's Ayn "I'll take Medicare for myself thank you" Rand for you).

Anyway, this all makes the campaign really exciting because clearly Mittens is not nearly as smart at Newt.