I've been kind of in shock for the past couple of days, trying to figure out which part of Monday night's "debate" offended me most. After hours of reflection, I think I found a winner: Newt Gingrich's rant on NASA:
"Well, sadly -- and I say this sadly because I'm a big fan of going into space, and I actually worked to get the shuttle program to survive at one point -- NASA has become an absolute case study in why bureaucracy can't innovate. If you take all the money we spent at NASA since we landed on the moon, and you apply that money for incentives for the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles, and instead, what we've had is bureaucracy after bureaucracy after bureaucracy, and failure after failure. I think it's a tragedy because younger Americans ought to have the excitement of thinking that they, too, could be part of reaching out to a new frontier."
NASA doesn't innovate? Really? Is he not aware of the epic amount of patents that are the product of NASA's ongoing innovations in aeronautics? How about the 6000+ patents NASA not only owns, but has licensed to the private sector to introduce products into markets that likely wouldn't exist were it not for their efforts?
The rest of the rant, laughingly, spouts the common "private sector does it better" rhetoric that has become lockstep for the GOP. Permanent stations on the moon/in space? Please Mr. Gingrich, tell me you are kidding.