Newt Gingrich has always been nutty about space.  If he wasn’t throwing his hat into the ring to be the Leader of the Free World, you could half imagine him happily spending his weekends in a Las Vegas convention centre in the company of Trekkies.

The man once dubbed “Newt Skywalker” for suggesting we go to the moon (rather than, say, Australia or Kazakhstan) to mine minerals, has been at it again.

"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American," Gingrich said on a visit to Florida's space coast.  “Of course, we would have a manned colony on the moon that flew an American flag.”

It’s hard to decide which part of that statement – the moon base or the notion of a Gingrich second term – sounds more far-fetched.

It is one thing to pander to the local audience, but it says much about the flakiness of the former Speaker’s campaign that even when he his in touching distance of pulling off a massive Primary upset in Florida, a key election swing state, he is allowed (or allow himself) to sound quite so absurd.

I’m too young to remember JFK’s 1961 pledge to put man on the moon, but even now, when you listen to the old recordings, you can still feel the thrill crackling over the airwaves.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth," he said.

I’m not sure what would be the contemporary equivalent of JFK’s proposal.  Or indeed, in these straitened times, whether there is still appetite for such things.

It needs to be something outlandish, but still tantalizingly possible (suggestions please), but Newt (68) is sadly showing his age if he thinks the best project to define the ambition of 21st Century America is a lunar hotel.

He’s good fun, is Newt, but he really is the Mr Toad of American politics; astonishingly (and sometimes, for a moment, even charmingly) self-delusional; seized with helpless enthusiasm by every new passing idea that floats into his brain; incorrigibly self-regarding, engaging and exciting, until the moment dawns on us, with Badger-like certainty, that he's really rather tedious.

Imagine President Gingrich settling into the back of The Beast (the presidential limo) for the first time, or behind the famous desk in the Oval Office, launch codes in hand, staring dreamily into the far distance.

Poop-poop!  Poop-pooooop!