FREDERICK, Md. -- Newt Gingrich unveiled a new message to Mitt Romney Monday morning if the former Massachusetts governor does become the Republican nominee: pick a conservative platform.

But speaking on the eve of three primaries that could potentially seal the Republican nomination in Romney’s favor, Gingrich vowed to only exit the race if a candidate gets the required delegates.

“I will be going to Tampa,” he insisted again. But Gingrich's “going to Tampa” line is starting to sound like actually traveling there rather than continuing a campaign there.

“Callista and I will both be going to Tampa, because we are going to fight for a conservative platform,” Gingrich continued. “He [Romney] has to win 1,144 uncontested delegates. At that point, the question is going to become, if he wants our support in the general election, let’s talk about the platform and it better be a solid, 21^st century conservative platform based on sound principles that we can stick to.”

Gingrich, speaking to a couple hundred people at a Ford dealership here in Western Maryland, noted that he took the recent Etch-A-Sketch comments from Romney’s communication director “very seriously” and worried that “clever” consultants would hinder a platform conducive to more conservative Republicans.

The former House Speaker also argues the former governor is being awarded too many delegates from Florida, Arizona, and Idaho because the states, he argues, are supposed to be proportional by RNC rules.

Campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond, tells NBC News that the campaign has sent letters to those state’s Republican Parties to correct the “errors.” But an aggrieved Florida voter has to file a challenge with the RNC and have the RNC’s ruling overturn that Florida is winner-take-all.

These new comments from the Speaker come as his campaign is trying to remain in the political conversation, as he struggles both financially and in recent elections. He has been focusing much more on attacking President Obama lately, as Gingrich says he does better doing that than focusing on his Republican opponents. While he did touch on Romney today, Gingrich failed to mention Rick Santorum, who also is ahead of him in the delegate count.

One topic Gingrich loves to talk about -- the court system in America, came up Monday morning as well. Perhaps in an appeal to the Tea Party attendees in the audience with “Don’t tread on me” flags, the Speaker launched a new attack on Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg for her comments on the U.S. constitution.

“When a Supreme Court justice said last year that the Constitution wasn't where she would look in order to get a constitution for the future -- she suggested the South African constitution is much better-- I wondered why she was serving on the United States Supreme Court,” he said.

Ginsburg, in that interview on Egyptian TV, said, “I would not look to the U.S. constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.” She instead said Egypt should look to more recent writings like in South Africa, Europe, and Canada.

“I can’t speak about what the Egyptian experience should be, because I’m operating under a rather old Constitution,” she said. “The United States, in comparison to Egypt, is a very new nation, and yet we have the oldest written Constitution still enforced in the world.”

She noted that the founders were “very wise” men, but that the Constitutional convention was not representative. They “were lacking one thing,” she said, that “there were no women as part of the Constitutional convention.” And she noted that the original U.S. Constitution preserved slavery.

But she also extoled the virtues of the U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment, separation of powers (including judicial independence), checks and balances, freedom, and liberty.

“And it’s a Constitution that starts out with three wonderful words, ‘We, the People,’” she said. “And so that’s the molding idea – that the government’s formed with the consent of the people and it should serve the interests of … all of the people not just some of them.”

Gingrich holds one more event in Maryland this afternoon but has no public events scheduled for Tuesday when voters in Maryland, Washington, DC and Wisconsin vote.

WASHINGTON, DC — Newt Gingrich's campaign is laying off a third of its paid staff, replacing its campaign manager, and lightening the campaign schedule as he continues with poor finishes in elections and is receiving little incoming money for his campaign.

“The campaign is being redesigned to focus on Tampa,” campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond told NBC News.

News of the cutbacks were first reported by Politico Tuesday evening. 

Michael Krull, an Iowan and college friend of Gingrich’s wife, Callista, who took over as campaign manager shortly after most of Gingrich’s original staff ditched him last summer, agreed to resign his position last weekend. Now, Vince Haley, the current deputy campaign manager and policy director, will assume the role.

Hammond refused to comment on what other staff were let go, saying “he will not discuss personnel matters.”

Gingrich’s campaign has been struggling to stay afloat financially for several weeks — posting slightly more debt than cash on hand in the last FEC filing for February. The former House Speaker, though, continues to promise he will go all the way to the Republican convention in Tampa this August unless another candidate obtains all 1,144 delegates beforehand.

Asked earlier today while campaigning in Maryland if he realistically has enough money to last him until the summer, Gingrich said he does.

“The money is very tight obviously,” he told reporters outside the state house.

The speaker even alluded to this apparent staff shake up, as well.

When asked by reporter in Annapolis this morning if he was asking his staff to take pay cuts, Gingrich said: “Well we're working through what it is going to take to get there [to the convention] and I think probably Joe DeSantis or R.C. will have something to say about that in the next day or two.”

Gingrich typically holds anywhere from three to five public campaign events a day but on Wednesday, Gingrich only has one public event scheduled in Washington, D.C. This trend will continue for the campaign as they begin to lighten the number of events.

Communications director Joe DeSantis tells NBC News as far as cutting back travel, “You will see Newt spend longer stretches of time in key states rather than bouncing from state to state.”

The speaker was originally scheduled to spend Wednesday in North Carolina but then cancelled the trip just yesterday.

These shakeups will undoubtedly increase speculation and calls for Gingrich to exit the GOP race. He has only won two states — his home state of Georgia and South Carolina — and is trailing both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in the delegate count.

ANNAPOLIS, MD -- While vowing to stay in the race until the Republican convention, Newt Gingrich admitted Tuesday morning that his campaign “money is very tight” and they are going to have to run a tight ship.

“I have the money to keep going,” Gingrich told reporters outside the Maryland statehouse. “We’re working through what it is going to take to get” to the convention.

The former House speaker, who also visited a famous local diner -- Chick and Ruth’s -- would not say whether he would need to lay off or cut staffers' pay in order to make it to Tampa in August. He did, however, turn down the notion that he cancelled his trip to North Carolina Wednesday for financial reasons.

“The only reason we cancelled North Carolina was to do things in Washington. We had an opportunity to do a couple things in Washington tomorrow and the Washington primary’s next Tuesday, and so that’s why we stayed in Washington,” he said.

The Gingrich campaign also began charging attendees at public events $50 to take a formal picture with the speaker that would be posted on their website -- something that only happened at fundraisers in the past.

The basic message being pushed today while campaigning in Maryland is that the race is far from over in Gingrich’s eyes. Maryland holds its primary on April 3.

“Gov. Romney is the frontrunner but is a long way from a majority,” Gingrich told reporters and promised to throw his support behind the former Massachusetts Governor if he becomes the party’s nominee.

“If he does get -- by the time Utah votes on June 26 -- a majority, I will support him and will be delighted to do everything I can to help defeat Barack Obama,” he said. “If, however, we get to June 26 and Gov. Romney doesn’t have a majority, I think we'll have one of the most interesting conventions in American history.”

The speaker heads to Maryland’s Eastern Shore Tuesday afternoon to speak to students at Salisbury University.

HOCKESSIN, Del. -- Marking the first presidential candidate visit to Delaware this cycle, Newt Gingrich criticized President Obama’s comments to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as “alarming behavior.”

“This is a president who is amazingly destructive of American interests,” Gingrich said inside firehouse here. “He promises the Russian president as soon as he gets the election out of the way, he'll sell out the American missile defense system. They need to give him a little ‘space’ so he can be flexible right after the election.”

Gingrich, who spoke before a county-level Republican meeting on Monday evening, focused his roughly 40-minute speech on energy – a theme he hopes will carry him to a comeback in the race.

“I believe you can develop a Republican campaign that despite a billion dollars in Obama money, despite the bias of the elite media, despite the power of the incumbent presidency,” he said. “You can defeat him by picking your fights carefully and sticking to them.”

Monday’s event, held in a state that doesn’t vote for another three weeks, also seemed to signal a new phase in the campaign. Event attendees were allowed to take pictures with the candidate for $50 per photo. Before tonight, supporters took photos with Gingrich for free.

Charging for photos, in addition to news that the campaign canceled a trip to North Carolina, contributes to the narrative that Gingrich is struggling to stay afloat financially.  

But, Gingrich continues to vow to stay in the race even until Delaware votes on April 24th.

“It would mean a whole lot and I do think if we win Delaware it helps reset this campaign for the ninth or tenth time. This has been the wildest roller coaster I have ever seen,” Gingrich said, speaking to hundreds. “You can make history here in Delaware and both Callista and I will be back regularly for the next few weeks because we do need your help and we do want your support.”

PORT FOURCHON, LA -- Newt Gingrich said while he believes President Obama is a Christian, the president conducts himself in a way that would fuel suspicions that he is a Muslim.

Asked by a reporter following a speech on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast Friday if it concerns him so many people in the country believe Obama is Muslim, Gingrich said it was the president’s problem.

"It should bother the president. Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he is a Muslim]?” Gingrich said. ”You have to ask why would they believe that? It's not because they're stupid. It's because they watch the kind of things I just described to you.”

The former House speaker had already told reporters at the Port Fourchon Operations Center he finds it “very bizarre that he is desperately concerned to apologize to Muslim religious fanatics” and is at war with the Catholic Church.

Gingrich did note this afternoon: “I have said publicly several times that I believe Obama is a Christian. He went to a Christian church for over 20 years. He was listening to the sermons.”

Earlier this week in Lake Charles, LA, the Speaker passed on the opportunity to correct a man who told the crowd Obama is a Muslim even though later that day he told a reporter he does believe Obama to be Christian.

But today’s comments on Obama’s faith also come just a day after Gingrich referenced “Obama’s Muslim friends” on a radio program.

Gingrich was asked on “Sandy Rios In the Morning radio show” about the press going over the details of Mormonism – Mitt Romney’s faith.

“First, look you need to understand the elite media is in the tank for Obama. They’re going to do anything that helps re-elect Obama. They’re totally committed to Obama. It is just astonishing to me how pro-Obama they are,” he responded. “You think you’re going to see two pages on Obama’s Muslim friends? Or two pages on the degree to which Obama’s persistently apologizing to Islam while attacking the Catholic Church? Do you see anybody in the elite media prepared to see say, ‘Gee, you know this is kind of odd that we really worry a lot about the Quran and nothing about the Bible?”

NBC's Alex Moe

Newt Gingrich holding a supporter's Etch A Sketch at an event in Houma, La., Thursday.

That was so yesterday.

But not for Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Both candidates, trying to upend front runner Mitt Romney, took to the trail today once again carrying Etch A Sketches.

First it was Santorum this morning, who dove head first again into the Romney campaign gaffe likening its campaign and candidate to the toy that can just be shaken up, erased, and redrawn once the fall campaign begins.

NBC's John Boxley reports that Santorum held up an Etch A Sketch at his first event in San Antonio today before USAA, the military home and life insurance company.

"Someone that doesn't have his policies on an Etch A Sketch," Santorum said. The crowd laughed.

NBC's Alex Moe reports that Newt Gingrich at his event today in Houma, La., held up a supporter's pink Etch A Sketch, microphone in hand.

Republican presidential candidate and former Senator Rick Santorum holds up an Etch-a-sketch while addressing supporters at a "Get Out The Vote" rally in Mandeville, La., March 21, 2012.

ARBUTUS, MD -- Mitt Romney said he plans to run on the same issues in the general election as he has in the primary in response to a top aide's comment likening Romney's pivot to the general election to an Etch A Sketch.

Romney acted to hastily control the damage resulting from comments by adviser Eric Fehrnstrom on CNN, which prompted a day's worth of attacks from Democrats, as well as Romney's Republican rivals.

Romney told reporters following his lone event today that while his campaign will change organization, the issues on which he'll run "will be exactly the same."

"I'm running as a conservative Republican," he said. "I'll be running as a conservative Republican nominee."

The comments gave Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich a new weapon to use against Romney, figuratively and literally illustrating their case that the former Massachusetts governor is only a conservative of political convenience.

The two men, who lag behind Romney in the delegate count, jumped at the opportunity to attack Romney after a senior adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, this morning compared moving into the general election campaign to the children’s toy this morning, saying, “you can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.”

Both Gingrich and Santorum brought small Etch A Sketch toys to their afternoon events in the state of Louisiana. 

“We're not looking for someone who's the Etch A Sketch candidate,” Santorum said after pulling out the toy during his event in Mandeville. “We're looking for someone who writes what they believe in in stone and stands true to what they say."

Santorum even told the crowd it was “the first of what I’m going to now call my ‘Etch A Sketch Tour of America.'"

“Given everybody's fears about Gov. Romney's flip flops, to have his communications director say publicly to all of us, if we're dumb enough to nominate him we should expect by the acceptance speech he'll move back to the left, triggers everything we should worry about,” Gingrich said as he began his town hall in Lake Charles, where he appeared holding the toy. "I think having an Etch A Sketch as your campaign model, raises every doubt about where we're going."

The former House speaker handed the popular childhood toy to a little girl sitting in the front row of the Harlequin Steaks and Seafood restaurant and joked, “You can now be a presidential candidate.” (Gingrich went on and autographed the toy for her after the event.)

Santorum said he purchased his Etch A Sketch at a Toys R Us store “down the way” while the Gingrich campaign simply said they bought the “Cars” themed toy today.

But the two candidates themselves were not alone in their purchases.

More than 2,000 miles away outside Romney's Arbutus event, Santorum’s press secretary was passing out mini Etch A Sketches in the parking lot.

Holding the one remaining toy she had yet to distribute, Alice Stewart told reporters this “gaffe” from a top Romney advisor “confirms what a lot of conservative have been afraid of.”

“The campaign acknowledged that his [Romney’s] conservative credentials can come and go with the climate, just like an Etch A Sketch, and we can’t have that,” Stewart said.

Romney had initially refused to address Fehrnstrom’s Etch A Sketch comments while asked several times on the ropeline following his event in Maryland.

“I’m not doing a press conference right now, OK?” Romney told reporters.

One group that does seem happy with all the buzz of the children’s toy today is the Ohio Art Company, the Etch A Sketch manufacturer.

"Happy to see Etch A Sketch, an American classic toy, is DRAWING attention with political candidates as a cultural icon and important piece of our society," said Nicole Gresh, spokeswoman for the manufacturer. "A profound toy, highly recognized and loved by all, is now SHAKING up the national debate. Nothing is as quintessentially American as Etch A Sketch and a good old fashion political debate.”

Alex Moe reported from Lake Charles, LA. Jamie Novogrod reported from Mandeville, LA.

CHICAGO, IL -- Newt Gingrich prides himself in running an unconventional presidential campaign and the man who currently oversees the team’s daily operations of that campaign fits this “anti-establishment” mold perfectly.

Patrick Millsaps, 39, Gingrich’s chief of staff, explains that he “stumbled into working in politics” a few years ago. He was brought on as the campaign’s top aide in late December amid an implosion in Gingrich’s numbers heading into the Iowa caucuses – the first contest that would launch two and a half months of voting.

“I got involved in politics by happenstance; I needed a job out of college,” said Millsaps, who graduated from Samford University in 1995 with a degree in Psychology after a short stint as a preacher. (He remains a licensed Baptist Minister who can still marry and bury people.)

Growing up in Marietta, GA, Millsaps was a constituent of the Republican lawmaker who would become his future boss – former House Speaker Gingrich. But the two men only met once, in 1994, as Gingrich worked the ropeline following an event. Eighteen years later, Millsaps, a lifelong Georgian, made his interest in helping the campaign known.

“The one type of race I have never been involved in as a volunteer was a presidential race,” Millsaps recalls telling one of Gingrich’s close advisors, Randy Evans, in early 2011. “I told him if there is ever a way I can help in a meaningful way, let me know.”

Nine months later, Evans did just that. Millsaps was contacted by the Gingrich campaign the day after Christmas (as he was about to take a week vacation), and flew to Iowa first thing to start as deputy legal counsel.

“One day he was in a court room in Southern Georgia, the next he was smack in the middle of the GOP primary. He didn’t blink,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said.

Having graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 2000, Millsaps has been practicing law ever since.

“In 1996, I worked as a deputy political director for a United States Senate candidate in Georgia,” he said. “I decided to go to law school after we lost the primary and after that I decided I was just done with politics.”

Moving to Camilla, GA – a small town in the Southwest section of the state – back in 2004, Millsaps started his own law practice while his wife, Elizabeth, opened a pharmacy. He continued to stay active in politics here and there, helping his former law school friends organize events for politicians near him, while also raising his three small daughters.

After working with the Gingrich campaign for just more than a month, the speaker promoted Millsaps to chief of staff when their charter plane landed in Reno, NV in early February. In this new role, Millsaps changed the organizational structure of the campaign and even created internal teams to help the process flow better.

“I think I brought a perspective that was very non-DC – there is nothing further from Washington, D.C. than Southwest Georgia,” he said.

This is the type of campaign Gingrich is trying to run, according to Millsaps, who admitted he thought he would be off the campaign after South Carolina. “It has been a benefit that I have worked on enough campaigns that I know my way around campaigns but it has also been a benefit that I bring a different perspective to the table,” he said.

“Patrick has really done a great job at doing a lot with limited resources in such a short amount of time,” Hammond said.

Now, Millsaps and the speaker work together very closely every day and have even become friends, complementing each other with their traits along the way.

“Speaker Gingrich is the one who came up with $2.50 gasoline. Nobody saw gasoline as the big issue. He has the big idea of how he wants his campaign to go and what we need to be talking about and then I am the one who tries to figure out what kind of assets we have and how we get the message out,” Millsaps said.

Millsaps described himself as the campaign’s “problem solver” and noted that the campaign always had a great product in its candidate – they just needed someone to push that material out the door to voters.

Vowing to only work for politicians he truly believes in, Millsaps says Gingrich has really struck him as a different type of politicians and doesn’t see this type of campaign happening again.

“Newt is the most intellectually curious person I have ever met,” he said. “I have met a lot of politicians that are just so full of themselves that you will never get a word in edgewise but Newt is the opposite of this.”

No matter what happens in the next few weeks, the chief of staff says he is in for the long haul.

“I am one of these people who believes that God has a plan for me and I am just going to see what happens next. I will stay with the campaign and hopefully take it all the way to Tampa and then see what happens,” Millsaps said. “I learned a long time ago that the people who try to plan their lives out seem to be disappointed.”

MONROE, LA – Newt Gingrich faces a significant hurdle in his strategy of winning the GOP presidential nomination at the party’s August convention, lengthening the already-long odds of him becoming the Republican nominee.
 
The former House speaker is already struggling to stay afloat financially; he finished behind Texas Rep. Ron Paul in last night’s Illinois primary, even though Paul barely campaigned in the state.
 
Nonetheless, Gingrich has vowed to press his candidacy all the way through the Republican National Convention this August in Tampa, Fla. His strategy hinges on the assumption that Romney will fail to win the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination, prompting a contested convention in which Gingrich could emerge as conservatives’ consensus choice.
 
But an RNC rule stipulating that candidates seeking the nomination must have won a plurality of votes in at least five states could complicate Gingrich’s already far-fetched strategy. RNC rule No. 40 states:

Nominations(b) Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a plurality of the delegates from each of five (5) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination. 

RNC Chairman Reince Preibus issued a stern warning to the candidates to that end this morning on the Daily Rundown.
 
“It's an important rule,” he said. “So when these candidates are adding up their delegates or when people out there have a particular issue that they would like to move at the convention, they had better make sure they at least have a plurality of five states to make these things happen.”
 
Gingrich, of course, has only won two primaries – first, South Carolina, and second, Georgia, the state he had represented in Congress. (Paul finds himself in a similar situation, having won delegates, but no caucuses or primaries.)
 
“Obviously we need to win some more states,” said a source close to the Gingrich campaign, acknowledging that they need to win at least three more states before the August convention. “I don’t think he [Gingrich] would be doing this if he didn’t think there was a road to winning.”
 
There is a caveat that could allow Gingrich to slip through. RNC press secretary Kirsten Kukowski told NBC News that a candidate may still be nominated at the convention if they are able to garner a plurality of five states on the floor. The only real road toward accomplishing that would involve capturing unbound delegates, who will be few and far between come August.
 
While this scenario remains possible, the likelihood of it actually happening seems slim.
 
If no GOP candidate reaches the 1,144 delegates needed to seal the nomination by the Tampa convention, it would open the possibility that all four remaining candidates would participate in a floor fight.
 
“The purpose of the primary season is to vet your candidate. The purpose of the convention is to pick your candidate,” the Gingrich source says. “The longer we stay in this race, the longer people are going to contrast and compare and then you get to the convention and then, we will have this big debate on who our nominee needs to be.”
 
But if Gingrich cannot win five states – or even if he does win just five – he would still face a perception problem come convention time. With 56 states and territories in play, it would be difficult for the winner of just a handful of those contests to make the case that he deserves the nomination.
 
“To change history, the primaries, in your favor is exceedingly difficult and almost unrealistic,” said Doug Heye, the former RNC communications director turned political consultant. “For a lot of folks, the perception that Gingrich cannot win is already there and you’ve seen it state after state as Gingrich has been left out of the conversation.”
 
RNC rule No. 40, Heye noted, basically codifies the notion that Gingrich no longer faces a viable path to the nomination.
 
“I fully expect that Speaker Gingrich will be in Tampa this summer but not as a viable candidate for President of the United States,” he said.

SHREVEPORT, La. -- Newt Gingrich slammed Robert De Niro’s comments last night at a fundraiser for President Obama, demanding that the president apologize for the actor's joke that America isn't yet again ready for a white first lady.

“I do want to say one thing on behalf of both my wife, and on behalf of Karen Santorum and on behalf of Ann Romney, and that is I think Robert De Niro is wrong,” Gingrich said as he began his speech at Strawn's Eat Shop Too. “I think the country is ready for a new first lady, and he doesn’t have to describe it in racial terms.”

At an Obama for America fundraiser in New York City Monday night, attended by Michelle Obama, De Niro joked about a possible GOP first lady.

"Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?" De Niro asked at the top of his remarks at Locanda Verde restaurant as the crowd yelled “no.” “Too soon, right?," he said.

A spokeswoman for the first lady issued a statement shortly after Gingrich concluded his remarks, calling De Niro’s comments “inappropriate.”

"We believe the joke was inappropriate," Olivia Alair, campaign press secretary to the first lady, said in a statement.

Gingrich criticized the remarks as “inexcusable” and called on President Obama to personally apologize.

“It is exactly wrong, it divides the country,” the former House speaker said. “If people on the left want to talk about radio talk show hosts, then everybody in the country ought to hold the president accountable when somebody at his event says something as utterly, totally unacceptable as Robert De Niro said last night, and I call on the president to apologize for him.”

While Gingrich stood up for all three women involved in the actor’s joke, he of course has his favorite.

“I have a personal preference, obviously, for Callista to be the first lady,” the speaker said to cheers in the room. “But, I tell you, I would be very proud and very honored to have Ann Romney as the first lady or Karen Santorum as the first lady. I think that just what De Niro said is just beyond the pale and he should be ashamed of himself.”

NBC's Carrie Dann contributed to this report.