I have personally spoken to both Santorum and Romney, to urge them to have an effective space policy, pointing out the numerous examples of private corporations that seek to monetize space. They are lacking vision in this area.
Gingrich has the vision for private expansion in space.
I have not seen the ad but I’m guessing it’s not a good one, even though overall I prefer Santorum to newt.
But newt made a mistake with his heavy handed way of bringing this up, suddenly, in FL. It looked like pandering. And the timing is wrong. He should have explained the issue better, as a geopolitical strategy, either early on in the debates, or later as the nominee or even in a state of the union or its own presser as President. People are hurting and they want relief from obamamanomics.
The way he brought it us deserved the ridicule it got on SNL. It probably didn’t deserve a mocking ad, which sounds like it hurts Santorum, but most of the country saw it as boondoggle spending that doesn’t fit in with their goals of survival right now.
Besides being damn exciting and bringing about new technologies, moon and space exploration is an important strategy for our survival, but I don’t think the Floridians nor the other American people got that out of his asking for it like a stairway to heaven.