On ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Newt Gingrich is moon president [Video]

As Newt Gingrich was holding a news conference in Las Vegas on Saturday night to discuss the way forward for his campaign after another Mitt Romney victory, an alternate reality was playing out on the eighth-floor stage of “Saturday Night Live,” a future in which Gingrich was president.

Of the moon.

Yes, the former House speaker’s grand scheme to have the United States operating a lunar colony proved comedy gold for the NBC sketch comedy series.

The cold open for Saturday’s show imagined the year 2014, when President Obama had been reelected and “no longer hides his socialist agenda.”

“Chaos reigns. But from the darkness, a visionary emerges and leads a group of pioneers to pursue a better future in space. He is ... Newt Gingrich: moon president.”

In addition to Moon President Gingrich, the sketch includes wife Callista, Vice Admiral Herman Cain and a robot servant, the “Reagantron 3000.”

Mitt Romney is there, too, a stowaway on the latest shuttle bringing Earth refugees to the colony. The former Massachusetts governor, who had once disparaged the idea of a moon colony, begs forgiveness and asks for a job in Gingrich’s “Admoonistration.”

“I’m just supposed to believe that you’ve completely changed your position?” Gingrich asks. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Romney replies, with an exaggerated laugh.

There’s much, much more, including a discussion of the value of open marriages, Gingrich’s plan for youth employment and Romney’s insistence that he’s a real “human man.”

You can watch the full sketch below: