The direction NASA has been heading is to join forces with current and former enemies in order to contribute to the dismantling of US engineering and science capacity.
Should the Republican candidate embrace the Bush renewal? My guess is, whoever wins, the renewal will go on in some form, insofar as the Shuttle will be replaced.
I hope the "reusable" mantra / propaganda dies a horrible and public death.
A public embrace of the Bush renewal may be difficult because the Pubbies are permitting the Dims and their partisan media shills to win the propaganda war over tax cuts. File that one under "never fired a shot in self-defense."
The way to beat the Dims in 2006 and 2008 is to paint them as they are -- anti-US, tax-increasing, pro-draft, anti-Christian, obstructionist, anti-democratic, single party state advocates.
In the case of tax cuts, the cuts should be altered -- rates should be left alone, but the personal exemption should be radically increased, in order to give everyone a tax cut, but have it fall disproportionately on those (like me, incidentally) who don't make a lot, and to have little impact (so Rush says) on the overall gov't receipts.
In the case of the space program, the independence of the US effort should be trumpeted, and heavy lift capability restored without resort to the four-engines-welded-together Russian answer to the old F1.
The Democrats will increase the taxes and let the space agency evolve into some kind of Algore New Age entity. There is not even one John Kennedy left among them.