Republicans are often panned by those on the left for being idiots, something that I was reminded of today listening to commentary about Newt Gingrich’s idea about building a base on the moon. Gingrich made the statements yesterday while playing to an audience on Florida’s space coast, where thousands have lost heir jobs after the space shuttle program was shut down by the government.

The first time I remember ever hearing anything about any of this is when Mitt Romney brought up the Gingrich’s moon mining plans in a debate back in December when the former Speaker of the House was having his first surge to the top of polls.

It seemed to me like a weird idea back then and it still seems like one today, thought Newt is saying that it proves he is a bold thinker, with “grandiose” ideas—an attempt to turn a criticism lobbed at him by Rick Santorum in another debate into a positive.

Here is Gingrich talking about his plans to colonize the moon by 2020, to coincide with the end of his second term—grandiose thinking, indeed:

It’s good to think big, but critics of Gingrich do have a point when they say that it’s dumb to go on about moon colonization when the country is over $15 trillion in debt.

There is no doubt, however, that many on the left using Gingrich’s statements to make the case he is a dangerous nut-job would be haling Obama as a visionary and the second coming of John F. Kennedy if the moon base idea were his.

We can expect to hear more about Newt the Moon-Man from Democrats if he becomes the Republican nominee. If they can’t portray Republicans as a dunces, like they did Reagan and George W. Bush, they will cast them as out-of-touch wackos or both.

Before they get too cocky, it might be fun to look at some of clips of things that Democrats have said and measure them against Gingrich’s moon base comments.

Here are some of my favorite moronic comments from members of the donkey party that were made in recent years.

This one from Rep. Hank Johnson is an all time classic. In the clip, Johnson expresses is concerns during during a House Armed Services Committee over what might happen to Guam because of overpopulation of U.S. troops. This looks like it might have come from an episode of “Saturday Night Live,” but it’s real.

I can only imagine what it must have taken for Admiral Robert F. Willard not to laugh in Johnson’s face. The military discipline is remarkable to behold, as is the stupidity of the Georgia congressman:

I love this from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who warned that 500 million Americans would lose their jobs every month that Republicans fought the passing of Obama’s $900 billion stimulus package. At that rate, 6 billion Americans would be out of work in a year, which would make for some pretty bad unemployment numbers for Obama to deal with while running for re-election.

This might be excused as misspeak, only she made the statement on two separate occasions. Maybe the Botox has gone to her brain. It could just be that she has become so used to spouting out exorbitant numbers with all the tax payer money she has helped spend in Washington that 500 million doesn’t really seem like that much:

I always think of the hard time that the leftist media gave Vice President Dan Quayle over his spelling of “potato” when I look at this clip from Vice President Joe Biden. It’s a good thing that Quayle never asked a cripple man stand up like Biden did to Missouri State Sen. Chuck Graham on another occasion. I’m sure that Quayle would have been berated for being heartless or said to have had a Jesus complex:

I think that it’s only fair to end this with a few clips from the genius that the Republican nominee, whomever that ends up being, will have to face in November. We all know about Obama’s “57 states” gaff, but here are some others that you might not have seen.

In this first one, made during a Hawaii press conference, the president seems as confused about geography as the vice president is about spelling. Some of Obama’s critics have said that he wasn’t born in the United States. Could he be agreeing with them?

While Obama has joked about Nancy Reagan having seances in the White House, the president sees dead people at Memorial Day events:

And I’ll bet you didn’t know we had an intercontinental railroad? This last one actually scares me a little. I suspect that Obama looks back on this and thinks that building one might not be such a bad idea.

I’m afraid that he might even propose something like this if he gets to make a second inaugural speech—another good reason not to let him get a second term. Give me Gingrich’s moon base any day over Amtrak across the Atlantic.