[XorNot]

NASA is a public institution and has been beholden to the Senate's irrational whims for it's entire life.

SpaceX is a private company. They receive public grants, sure, but they have a profitable launch business with the Falcon 9. Their requirement is that they can sustain themselves, not that they can keep their own internal project from being cancelled by directive of the US government.

On some level what the public (and really, it's space nerds like us) think doesn't really matter. The public would in fact be hard pressed to stop them getting contracts from the US government provided they can underbid Boeing at this point.