Photo by rbashir

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wasn’t kidding around when he said last week that “I think grandiose thoughts.” He spent much of a speech late Wednesday night in Florida talking about his plans for a U.S. base on the moon. By 2020—”the end of my second term,” he rhapsodized to the crowd—not only will there be a permanent American presence on the moon, it will be the launchpad for our eventual settlement of Mars.

But the Republican candidate for president doesn’t just want to reach for the solar system, he wants to democratize it, too. Gingrich said that as president, he’ll promote what he called the “Northwest Ordinance for Space.”

The Northwest Ordinance, for those who dozed off during seventh-grade history, was the 1787 law that set the rules for the land ceded by Great Britain at the end of the Revolutionary War that encompassed what we now call Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin. One of the provisions of the law was that each of the then-new territories could apply for statehood once they reached 60,000 residents.

Gingrich’s Northwest Ordinance for Space is a bit less lofty, at least in terms of population requirements. The lunar base, he says, could become a fully fledged state with 13,000 people.

As far as D.C. statehood? Well, in addition to having a long record of statements about exploration of the heavens, Gingrich also has a history that doesn’t bode well for District autonomy. In 1995, shortly after Gingrich speaker of the House, GOP leaders talked about using the city as a policy laboratory.

So, congratulations to the moon! If Gingrich is elected president, it’ll have a better chance than D.C. does of becoming the 51st state.

Gingrich’s speech last night.