IMHO, allowing payment by USD/credit card kind of defeats the purpose of everything we're doing here.

How so? Someone would be paying USD to mine coins, effectively exchanging USD into cryptocurrency. Nothing wrong with that.
It defeats the whole purpose of Irreversible Bitcoin Transactions. You rent a rig with a credit card, start a chargeback, say that your card was stolen and used for some shady services. BAM. Providers lose everything.
LeaseRig can shield providers from this risk and there are ways to deal with it if not completely avoid it, i.e. use the full scope of security measures provided by the card issuers, verify buyer's identity, limit amounts etc. If Coinbase can sell BTC that way I'm sure it is possible to work this out. It would be costly though and would probably have to involve an extra fee, so the question is whether there would be enough demand for that.
Leaserig and Coinbase are 2 very different things. And how are we supposed to receive it? In BTC? Via bank transfer?
Do you want leaserig to become a huge bitcoin exchange?
By the way, you cannot buy BTC from coinbase using a credit card.