Romney adviser: NASA 'outsourced' to Russia by Obama 'management eunuchs'

Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu on Monday attempted to defend GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's links to jobs that Bain Capital helped send overseas by claiming that President Barack Obama "outsourced" NASA's Shuttle program to Russia -- something actually orchestrated by former President George W. Bush.

Over the weekend, Senate majority whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that Romney was "running away from his company, Bain Capital, like a scalded cat" because he didn't want to be associated with jobs that were sent to countries like China by the companies it invested in.

On Monday, Sununu attempted to flip the outsourcing argument back on President Barack Obama and "the management eunuchs at the White House."

"You want to talk outsourcing?" Sununu asked CNN's Soledad O'Brien. "Let's go back to the Solyndra, Fisker, BrightSource, First Wind -- all of grants that were given to cronies, to people who bundled, to people who contributed to Obama."

"In fact, we had an event yesterday that wasn't well reported," he continued. "We launched a U.S. astronaut up to the space station. But you know how she was launched? She was launched on a Russian spacecraft because President Obama has outsourced a major portion of the U.S. space program to the Russians."

"So, let's stop playing games with this outsourcing distortion."

Only 12 hours earlier, the conservative Drudge Report had featured an all-caps headline reading, "OUTSOURCED IN SPACE: NASA SENDS ASTRONAUT ON RUSSIAN ROCKET" that linked to an Investors Business Daily columnist Andrew Malcolm -- who was previously listed as number 28 on Salon's "Hack List" -- calling the mission "real Obama outsourcing."

But it was it was president Bush in 2004 who announced that the Shuttle program would be retired before the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares 1 launcher was ready to take American astronauts into space.

In 2008, Bush signed a waiver allowing U.S. astronauts to fly to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz vehicles beyond 2011.

Watch this video from CNN's Starting Point, broadcast July 16, 2012.