To the editor:
Super Tuesday is approaching at light speed.
On Tuesday, March 6, Massachusetts Republican voters will have the opportunity to vote for their preferred candidate to challenge President Obama in the general election in November.
Some 243,000 people in South Carolina went to the polls to give their support for Newt Gingrich on Jan. 21. Just four days afterward, Gingrich outlined what I would call a very dense Socialist agenda, declaring that the United States will have a permanent manned colony on the moon by 2020 if he is in charge.
He also stated, "By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American."
It will depend, he said, on a vibrant commercial spaceflight industry and that America would possess a next-generation propulsion system by then, allowing the nation to get astronauts to Mars quickly and efficiently. He said near-Earth space would be bustling with economic activity by then and the U.S. space program needs a kick in the pants like the one President John F. Kennedy gave it in 1961.
Any plan to provide food and fresh water to the moon, however, remains unpublicized.
These recent pronouncements by Gingrich are starkly reminiscent of the Space Shuttle program being promoted as a cost-recovery and profitability enterprise. That vehicle, of course, was an extremely expensive endeavor.
It seems fairly obvious to me that the former Freddie Mac consultant just prefers to deliver yet another kick to the American wallet.
The most likely alternative for Republican voters seems to be Mitt Romney, who is a bit more of a down-to-Earth sort of guy.
Romney, who joined the Marriot board of directors after enacting a mandatory health insurance law, which mandates health coverage be supported by the commonwealth for previously uninsured workers and others without the adequate financial resource during his single term as the governor of Massachusetts, now has the support of a super-PAC that has received $1 million from two heirs of the Marriot fortune.
I can offer no criticism of that, being a supporter of free speech, freedom of the press, and free markets, and an opponent of censorship. Republican voters, however, now seem to have their primary choice between a moonbat or a welfare state promoter.
However, if Ron Paul emerges as the preferred candidate of the GOP, I will consider voting as a Republican.
MARK S. FULLER
Gloucester
