Newt Gingrich Still Angling For Job As Governor of Moon

The 2012 election is the collision of many, many smaller issues: Immigrants, and how they're destroying everything; the disenfranchisement of Poors , due to laziness; that little issue of health care and who gets to blame whom for $700 billion in Medicare cuts. Plus deficits and tax rates and reproductive rights and Freedom and student loans and Sharia law and Libya and Gitmo and income inequality and gay marriage and how single women are whores, just to name a few.

There's a lot of stuff going on in a lot of places. What should we be focusing on?

I know! The moooooooon! 

If some of you Undecideds were feeling pretty ambivalent about all those issues but are super passionate about space travel, the Romney campaign has prepared a brochure for you — they've got a whole space plan !

One Republican, however, is displeased with the plan: Captain Newton Tiberius Gingrich, he of the famous primary-season promise of an American moon base.

“The Romney plan for space starts to move in the right direction but could be much more robust,” the former House speaker told NBC News a day after the Republican presidential nominee unveiled his “Securing U.S. Leadership in Space” plan. “We could move into space much, much faster than we are. Romney is better than [President] Obama on space but could be bolder and more visionary.”

Yes, those are demands for more vision in science, from the guy whose summary of evolution is "We could have been rhinoceroses, but we got lucky this week ." Tell us, Newt, what's the plan? Bigger telescopes, for Jesus-hunting? An orbiting McDonald's? Replacing street lamps with space mirrors ?

We do not know, because he rather disappointingly did not elaborate, but it's good to know that Romney is better on space than Obama. (Just don't ask him to pay teachers or pave roads, because DEFICITS.)

In any case, it's definitely settled that Gingrich would really appreciate an appointment to the Official Office In Charge Of Moon Stuff, which could possibly include a trip to the moon, where there are surely people he hasn't married yet.

As part of the plan's glorious (and hopefully distracting) unveiling, Paul Ryan was on Florida's space coast Saturday to talk to folks out there about how important space travel is :

“Today, if we want to send an astronaut to the space station, we have to pay the Russians to take him there,” Ryan said to boos from the crowd. “China may someday be looking down on us from the Moon. That’s unacceptable."

Certainly signs of good news for the region hit hard by unemployment after the shuttles were retired, right? Let's go to the space plan:

A strong and successful NASA does not require more funding, it needs clearer priorities.

Ah. So, no jobs, then? At least Ryan, like, so loves NASA, as ABC points out:

The Obama campaign reacted to Ryan’s comment this afternoon by noting that Ryan voted against NASA funding twice in the 2008 and 2010 NASA Authorization Acts.

OK, OK, so maybe he's glossing over that because it was a ridiculous thing to vote against, or maybe he's had a genuine change of heart. We can all at least agree that “China may someday be looking down on us from the Moon" is not the way to show them our good side. Surely Mr. Ryan's running mate is in favor of getting there first? Did somebody ask Romney about this back in January, when ol' Newt was all gung-ho about that moon base? DUH they did:

"I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, 'You're fired,'" Romney said in the debate... "The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea, but it's not a good idea."

Romney/Ryan space plan, in review: NASA, good. More money for NASA, bad. Obama helping send a rover to Mars: not mentioned. Vote Romney.