To The MOON Newt! {Wasn’t PR Supposed To Be 51st.?

Wasn’t Puerto Rico ( State Ab: “IR") supposed to be the 51st state? Not according to Newt. It’s supposed to be the Moon!

Newt Gingrich’s proposal for a colony on the moon received a lot of attention in the CNN Republican debate last night because it is, for lack of a better term, weird.

Gingrich is not the first prominent Republican to talk about going to the moon. In fact, George W. Bush made a little-known promise in 2004 to try to send a manned expedition back to the moon. According to Bush, part of the appeal of going there was that lunar “soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air.” Needless to say, not much progress has since been made on humans being able to breathe moon dirt, and it did not come up as a significant issue afterward in Bush’s reelection campaign.
After all, while plenty of candidates have campaigned on Florida’s Space Coast, few have been so bold or outlandish as to talk about creating space colonies and pledging a mission to Mars. Gingrich certainly comes by this belief honestly, having introduced a bill in Congress to establish the parameters for space-based statehood in 1981. But it’s still an issue that is unusually quirky for a presidential candidate. However, it’s not the first, nor will it be the last time a candidate has proposed an offbeat policy that may not appeal to voters, let alone to common sense generally.
 A weird campaign proposal that did become a major issue in a presidential campaign was Barry Goldwater’s suggestion that U.S. forces in Vietnam should have the latitude to use tactical nuclear weapons. In specific, he suggested that the “defoliation of the forests by low-yield atomic weapons could be done. When you remove the foliage, you remove the cover.” This was seen not just as strange, but dangerous, particularly coming from a man who had made an offhand remark suggesting the United States “lob one into the men’s room at the Kremlin.” The result was perhaps the most infamous television advertisement in history, the Daisy ad that warned of the possibility of a nuclear holocaust if Goldwater were elected.


thedailybeast.com
AP photo