"If there are political reasons (I haven't seen many in tha article, it's not NASA that's to be blamed, but the politicans)."

This is wrong approach. If the miltary loses a war, you can blame it on the politicans- e.g. Vietnam. But if don't want to lose wars, you change the military, you change basics and you change how the miltary interacts with it's civilian authority. Politicans could still make the miltary lose wars, but current US miltary makes this harder for politicans to do.

"Also, comparing with what's done in other countries and their lack of success in dramatically reducing the costs, is an indication too."

Russia and China make cheaper rockets. Socialism would never get you into space. It just won't work. It's a very fundemental problem to do with how socialism works. Socialism interacting with a large free market might work, but you would need to try very hard pounding the square pegs into the round holes, to maintain both the free market and the Socialism. When I say it might work, I'm not saying it's The Solution. Free market is The Solution.
The question really comes down to, do we really want Cheaper Access To Space. This does not merely translate to govt spending less per lb of payload put into space- this fairly unimportant. A more correct translation is, Joe Blow wants to put something into space. Making this possible in shortest period of time, and lowest cost is what is meant by "Cheaper Access".
So question is do we really want CATS?
We already "have" the "half measures", the question is do we want the real thing.