Efrem Lukatsky / AP file

Newt Gingrich says Mitt Romney's space plan doesn't go far enough.

BELOIT, Wis. – One-time presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who promised during the GOP primary to create a U.S. moon colony if elected, criticized Mitt Romney’s plan for space exploration as not being “robust” enough.

“The Romney plan for space starts to move in the right direction but could be much more robust,” the former House speaker told NBC News a day after the Republican presidential nominee unveiled his “Securing U.S. Leadership in Space” plan. “We could move into space much, much faster than we are. Romney is better than [President] Obama on space but could be bolder and more visionary.”

Saturday, Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, laid out the campaign’s plan during a townhall meeting in Orlando, Fla., and accused President Barack Obama of “dismantling” America’s space program.

"We are near the Space Coast, I think it’s important that we have a space program that has a clear space mission, a space program that we know where we are heading in the future, and a space program that is the unequivocal leader on the planet in space travel and space research,” Ryan said at the University of Central Florida. “We don’t have that right now.”

The Wisconsin congressman continued: “Mitt Romney and I believe that America must lead in space. Mitt Romney and I believe we need a mission for NASA, a mission for a space program, and we also believe that this is an integral part of our national security.”

During the long Republican primary season, Gingrich regularly spoke about fixing the space program after the cancellation of American space shuttles.

Speaking in Cocoa, Fla., at the end of January, Gingrich vowed the United States would “have the first permanent base on the moon” and by the end of 2020 the country would have "the first continuous propulsion system in space" capable of allowing people travel to Mars.

Romney, whom Gingrich later endorsed for president after suspending his campaign in May, mocked the former House speaker for proposing a lunar colony during one of the several GOP debates earlier in the year.

"I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, 'You're fired,'" Romney said at the debate in Jacksonville, Fla., co-hosted by CNN, the Republican Party of Florida and the Hispanic Leadership Network. "The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea, but it's not a good idea."

Under a President Romney administration, there would be four space priorities: focusing NASA, partnering internationally, strengthening security, and revitalizing industry.

The steps put forward by the Romney-Ryan ticket do not go far enough in Gingrich’s eyes.

“I was with Richard Branson in Yalta last week and his commitment to a dynamic private secure entrepreneurial model that works with innovators and risk-takers to put people into space inexpensively (compared to government rates) is a big example of the future,” Gingrich said in an email Sunday.

Branson, the entrepreneur and CEO of Virgin Airlines, is launching Branson's Virgin Galactic which will offer commercial space flights as the government closes down it’s space shuttle operations.

ARLINGTON, VA -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday afternoon that he's “very comfortable” not having a speaking role at the Republican National Committee convention next month.

“I personally am very comfortable not giving a speech because I think frankly, there is a whole new generation of candidates out there and people who represent the future,” Gingrich said following a quick event at Belmont TV on behalf of Mitt Romney. “But we haven’t talked about that yet.”

Gingrich -- who addressed reporters in the same city where he suspended his presidential campaign nearly three months ago -- promised continuously during the final weeks of his failed presidential run that he would push for a “conservative platform.”

No official announcement has been made regarding the former House speaker’s role in Tampa. but one spot is sure at the Democratic National Committee Convention in early September: Former President Bill Clinton will address the crowd and Gingrich is pleased.

“I think that will be a terrific opportunity for those of us who served with President Clinton to point out that Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton,” Gingrich said. (That said, Gingrich presided as the speaker of the GOP-controlled House that voted to impeach Clinton during the late 1990s.)

While Monday’s event just outside of Washington, DC in the battleground state of Virginia was billed by the Romney campaign as a “we did build this event,” the questions asked of Gingrich focused on a variety of other topics, including the GOP nominee’s tax returns.

Gingrich, who was a leading voice calling for Mitt Romney to release his tax returns during the primaries, today said “people are not going to take that as a major issue.”

“I’ve tried to raise the issue but frankly, I think the results of the primary also indicated that the American voters are pretty comfortable that this is a guy who has had good accountants, good lawyers, he has obeyed the law,” he said.

Asked to weigh in on the developing dialogue from Romney’s trip overseas – specifically the GOP nominee’s remarks in Jerusalem that drew a link between culture and GDP in Israel and Palestinian territories.

“I think that the whole issue of how do you encourage an economy based on trust and faith, how do you encourage the rule of law when you have Hamas and Hezbollah and Fatah and I think there is a legitimate question to say maybe these are antithetical to being prosperous. I find it fascinating that nobody wants to ask the question, why is Hong Kong prosperous? Why is Singapore prosperous? Why is Israel prosperous? Why can't we apply this same prosperity to Gaza? Why can't we apply this same prosperity to the West Bank?” Gingrich said.

Updated 3:53 p.m. - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has joined forces with the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) to launch a fundraising committee aimed at helping to pay off the millions of debt owed by his erstwhile presidential campaign while also helping active GOP candidates for Congress.

A committee, "Solutions Start in the House," registered with the Federal Election Commission at the end of May. Proceeds from the joint committee are split between Newt 2012 and the NRCC. The next fundraising stop for the committee is coming up in Nevada.

"The goal of this venture is to raise money for candidates running for the House but also to  pay down our own debt," Gingrich spokesman, RC Hammond, told NBC News. "We want to pay off the debt off as fast as possible but we are realistic that it will take a few years to pay down the debt."

After Gingrich withdrew from the presidential race in early May, FEC reports showed he was nearly $4.8 million in debt. As of last month, the campaign still owed slightly more than $4.7 million.

Hammond says this partnership with the NRCC is just one of the avenues Newt 2012 is using to pay off the debt. Gingrich has also been traveling to various states to host small luncheons and receptions on his own to raise money and the campaign has been renting their email and mail lists in addition to Solutions Start in the House.

Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney has not directly helped Gingrich pay off any debt but the former speaker has attended at least two known fundraisers with Romney in Georgia and Nevada that could have brought new funds to Newt 2012.

According to a source close to many of the creditors, the campaign set up long term deals with many companies owed money back in May that they would make monthly payments. The payments came for the month of June, the source says, but not for July.

There is still a long way to go, Hammond admitted, but said they were trying to be "proactive." Creating this group with the NRCC, fell in line with Gingrich's desire to help create a conservative platform for the GOP ticket and encourage a greater majority in the House of Representatives.

Adding to his visibility, the former Speaker will also appear on The Tonight Show this Wednesday.

Is Mitt Romney playing with fire in his dealings with Donald Trump?

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee will appear with Trump, the pugnacious real estate mogul and reality television star, at a fundraiser Tuesday in Las Vegas. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a nemesis of Romney's throughout the Republican presidential primary, will round out the group.

Steve Marcus / Reuters

Real estate mogul Donald Trump's ties to presidential candidate Mitt Romney run deeper than most run-of-the-mill supporters of the former Massachusetts governor.

Setting aside Gingrich’s own bombast, it’s Trump who could prove the bigger long-term headache for Romney. The latest example of that came Tuesday morning, when Trump said he’s still unconvinced that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, further linking Romney to that sentiment in a subsequent tweet from his @realDonaldTrump handle:

@BarackObama is practically begging @MittRomney to disavow the place of birth movement, he is afraid of it and for good reason. He keeps using @SenJohnMcCain as an example, however, @SenJohnMcCain lost the election. Don’t let it happen again.

It’s become clear that Trump’s ties to Romney run deeper than most run-of-the-mill supporters of the former Massachusetts governor. Romney and Trump appeared together when the “Apprentice” host made official his endorsement on Feb. 2. Since then, Trump’s become an involved surrogate for Romney, doing radio interviews and robocalls during the height of the GOP primary. He’s also hosted fundraisers for Romney, most notably one on Ann Romney’s birthday that netted the campaign $600,000.

“Donald Trump is playing an extremely important role, which has been acknowledged by both Ann and Mitt Romney, which has been acknowledged by them in election night speeches,” said Michael Cohen, a spokesman for Trump, in an interview.

Romney put some distance between the two men, though, before taking off for Colorado late on Monday night. "You know, I don't agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people," he told reporters aboard his campaign charter plane.

Romney was burned back in April when conservative rocker (and campaign supporter) Ted Nugent called Obama “evil,” and said if the incumbent were to win re-election, “I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

FIRST THOUGHTS: Playing the Trump card

Democrats stoked that story in the media, forcing Romney to personally address the Nugent controversy; now, it appears as though they’re hoping for another opportunity to do the same with Trump.

That is, when — not if — Trump goes off-message, Romney will have to answer for the controversy. His campaign won’t have the luxury of shrugging off a figure like Trump, who’s undeniably much closer to the Republican nominee than Nugent.

"It raises a question, that's come up before during this campaign, as to whether Gov. Romney will embrace these extreme voices in his party, or stand up to them," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Friday on MSNBC.

And already, the Obama campaign released a video on Tuesday bracketing the fundraiser this evening, contrasting Romney's relative silence toward Trump with the actions taken by Republican nominee John McCain in 2008 to shun extreme voices in the GOP.

For now, the Romney campaign has emphasized its singular focus on the economy, casting media firestorms around Trump or Romney’s previous work at Bain Capital as nothing less than a distraction.

"In a world of record job loss, record home loss, more people falling into poverty than time since the Depression, I don't think this stuff matters," said a Romney aide. "I would think the last few weeks would be a good lesson in that. From the anniversary of the Osama bin Laden killing to gay marriage, this election is just about one thing: are you happy with the economy and who do you think will do a better job?"

But the irony for Romney is that, for a campaign that prides itself on discipline and focus, its association with Trump threatens at any moment to knock the candidate off-message.

• Consider just a small sampling of the things Trump has recently said:
  May 22: Trump said on CNN that invoking Obama’s association with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the campaign, which Romney had disavowed, is fair game. "These tapes are devastating for the president. I mean, Rev. Wright is an angry man. He's extremely angry at the president,” Trump said on CNN. “I see nothing wrong with using it."
  May 22: Also on May 22, Trump stoked the flames of “birtherism,” skepticism of whether the president was born in the U.S., despite Obama having released his long-form birth certificate a year earlier, showing he was, in fact, born in Hawaii. Trump tweeted: “I wonder if @BarackObama ever applied to Occidental, Columbia or Harvard as a foreign student. When can we see his applications? What do they say about his place of birth.”
  May 7: Trump suggested, during the Chen Guangcheng incident, that the United States’ economic tension versus China could translate into an actual war in due time. “It's not a war with bullets, but it's certainly a war,” Trump said of those economic tensions. “Maybe someday, it ends up with bullets because, frankly, they're building a military like you wouldn't believe.”

And there are more politically substantive examples of Trump breaking with Romney and the GOP.

“I just think it’s very dangerous,” he said of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposals this March on FOX. “Already, the Democrats are just starting to write their campaign literature based on this plan. I think it’s very dangerous for the Republicans.”

Cohen said that Trump didn’t presume to speak for Romney.

“Donald Trump is his own individual, and he will make statements that he feels are accurate, are on the minds of other Americans and are significant in showing the voters who the real Barack Obama is,” he said. “Whatever questions will be posed to Gov. Romney and the Romney camp, they are certainly entitled to answer as they see fit. The current president and vice president don’t agree on all topics. Not all Republicans agree with all Republicans, and not all Democrats agree with all Democrats. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.”

And to Trump’s credit, he’s never been known as a shrinking violet. His views have certainly been publicly aired at this point, and voters may be able to better distinguish between his headline-grabbing comments and the more staid sentiments of Romney.

But in a campaign cycle driven by grievance politics (“When will Mitt Romney/Barack Obama apologize for…?”), it’s difficult to imagine Romney not having to answer for some outburst of Trump’s between now and November.

“He’ll stand up next to Donald Trump, and he’ll talk about why he wants to be president, and why he believes the economy needs to be turned around,” Romney adviser Kevin Madden said Friday on MSNBC of the way Romney would relate to Trump. “Anytime that something goes off of that – or something where Gov. Romney would disagree – he’s going to make that very clear, just as he has in the past, and he’ll do it in the present, and he’ll do it in the future.”

NBC’s Garrett Haake contributed to this report.

Newt Gingrich will make his first appearance with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney on May 29 in Las Vegas.

NBC News has learned the former House speaker will attend a fundraiser for Romney at Trump Towers in Las Vegas Tuesday evening. Donald Trump will also attend.

The last time Gingrich and Romney were in Nevada together was in early February, amid a bitter fight for the nomination.

Rumors broke just days before the Feb. 4 Nevada caucuses – and were confirmed by several news outlets -- that Trump himself would endorse Gingrich. Hours later, however, the casino mogul endorsed Romney.

A joint public event with the two former competitors may occur next month.

In his drop-out speech Wednesday, Newt Gingrich singled out one of the two primary states he won: South Carolina, whose 30-year streak of picking the eventual nominee Gingrich acknowledged he had officially ended.

“I have to thank the voters of South Carolina, and I have to apologize to them,” Gingrich said. “We will have broken their tradition of always picking the nominee. This will make me feel slightly guilty every time we go through South Carolina.”

But Palmetto State experts insist that the first-in-the-south primary state’s importance as an early presidential bellwether remains unchanged – even if the current Republican Party slogan -- “We Pick Presidents” -- is no longer completely accurate.

“Think of it as, if you’re a marketing director for a product, and you have all these slogans to sell your product,” Winthrop University political science professor Scott Huffmon pointed out. “You’ll drop that from your advertising but you’ll still stress everything else.”

He noted that South Carolina would remain the first test of candidates’ strength in the delegate-rich South.

“At last count we have something like 160 Electoral College votes, and you need 270 to win,” Huffmon said. “If you can find a Republican who can appeal to the entire South, and they’ve got almost 60 percent of all the Electoral College votes that they need to become president.”

South Carolina can still sell its primary, Huffmon added, as the place “where the presidential mettle gets tested… where you have to face the first fiery brands of Southern conservatism and see if candidates can stand up.”

State Republican Party Chairman Chad Connelly also said he didn’t think the state’s reputation would suffer as a result of its picking a candidate other than the party nominee.

“We might not have our same branding motto or whatever, but the fact that we’re an important part of the process, that hasn’t changed a bit,” Connelly said, noting that the state’s small size and relatively inexpensive media markets allow campaigns with varying amounts of resources to be competitive – something he suggested strengthens the eventual nominee.

“I think Gov. Romney will tell you that he’s a better candidate, he’s a better debater, he’s better with the people than he was before because of this whole process,” Connelly said. Romney lost South Carolina 40-28 percent to Gingrich. 

Connelly stressed that he’s not considering changing the state party’s motto any time soon, focusing more on raising money to send South Carolina volunteers to other swing states to help with Republican get-out-the-vote efforts.

And as far as Gingrich’s apology to the voters of South Carolina, at least one of his supporters says there are no hard feelings.

“He owes no one an apology,” said Allen Olsen, a former Columbia Tea Party leader and one of Gingrich’s earliest proponents in the state. “He just got beat, and I don’t think he owes South Carolina an apology. I’m just proud to support him.”

But, Olsen added, now that Romney has prevailed, he said he wished Gingrich “hadn’t come off sounding like a sore loser” in his speech Wednesday.

“I wish he would have come off and endorsed Romney and offered to work with Romney more,” Olsen said.

ARLINGTON, VA -- Newt Gingrich finally ended his presidential bid on Wednesday at a hotel just outside of the nation's capital, where he once led the Republican Party in Congress.

After a week of broadcasting his intent to suspend his campaign -- including the release of a video earlier this week thanking supporters and previewing the announcement -- Gingrich formally ended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination at an event his campaign had billed as a "press conference to announce suspension of campaign."

Benjamin Myers / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks next to his wife Callista Gingrich as he suspends his presidential campaign May 2 in Arlington, Va.

"Today, I'm suspending the campaign but suspending the campaign does not mean suspending citizenship. Callista and I are committed to be active citizens. We owe it to America. We owe it to Maggie and Robert," Gingrich said, referring to his only two grandchildren, here in his home state of Virginia.

Once bitter rival of Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee, Gingrich vowed during his 26 minute speech to do whatever possible to beat Barack Obama but came short of actually endorsing Romney.

"I'm asked sometimes is Mitt Romney conservative enough. And my answer is simple: compared to Barack Obama? You know, this is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan. This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist President in American history," Gingrich said while addressing roughly 100 members of the media inside the Hilton Hotel.

Romney said in a statement: "Newt Gingrich has brought creativity and intellectual vitality to American political life.  During the course of this campaign, Newt demonstrated both eloquence and fearlessness in advancing conservative ideas. Although he long ago created an enduring place for himself in American history, I am confident that he will continue to make important contributions to our party and to the life of the nation."

Gingrich’s spokesman said an official endorsement of Romney is still to come.

The news was far from surprising, given the way the former House speaker had been openly discussing the prospect of his exiting from the race ever since he finished poorly in the Delaware primary.

After finishing nearly 30 percent behind Mitt Romney in DE -- a state Gingrich frequented leading up to the election -- the speaker basically  gave two concession speeches while campaigning in North Carolina last week. He began calling Romney the "nominee" and said it was time to "be honest about what's happening in the real world as opposed to what you would like to have happen."

Gingrich's campaign had been considered virtually dead for weeks, though the winner of the South Carolina and Georgia primaries vowed to contest the nomination all the way through the Republican convention this summer in Tampa. Gingrich had assailed Romney's conservatism, and, to boot, President Obama's campaign circulated a video this morning featuring the ex-speaker's greatest hits against Romney.

That said, the month of May is far later in the election cycle than most political observers thought Gingrich would last. After suffering missteps in the launch of his campaign, most of Gingrich's senior staff quit on him last June.

Gingrich must also still work to erase millions of debts incurred during his campaign, mostly during its tail end.

But at today’s event, the Speaker seemed cheerful and unfazed by the $4 million hole he is in. He rather spent time talking about one of his most memorable ideas from the past 10 months – his proposed moon colony.
 
“My wife has pointed out to me approximately 219 times, give or take three, that the moon colony was probably not my most clever comment in this campaign. I thought, frankly, in my role providing material for Saturday night live it was helpful but the underlying key point is real,” Gingrich joked.

Chris Keane / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at a rally on the night of the New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware primaries in Concord, North Carolina April 24, 2012.

Newt Gingrich will suspend his campaign next week, ending his pursuit of the presidency, but almost certainly not his life in the national spotlight.

NBC News learned that Gingrich will suspend his campaign on May 1, and may well endorse Mitt Romney, his nemesis throughout the primary season.

But if one thing seems unassailably true about the end of Newt Gingrich's bid for the presidency, it's that we haven't seen the end of Newt Gingrich.

The former House speaker's career has, if nothing else, been marked by its series of peaks and valleys. Gingrich ends his campaign for the Republican nomination exploring the depths of one such valley: his campaign wracked with debt, his political stature at an all-time low within the GOP, and his private business seriously threatened.

But like a cat with nine lives, throughout his career, Gingrich has shown a penchant for achieving unthinkable political resurrections. While he might have cashed in several lives during this campaign -- and had certainly spent more in his preceding political life -- it seems unthinkable that the public has seen the last of this man.

“We had an avalanche fall on us, and Newt dug himself out. And that's the story of his entire career,” said Rick Tyler, the spokesman for a pro-Gingrich super PAC. Tyler was a longtime aide to the former House speaker before having joined a mass resignation of senior staff last June -- a particular low point for the candidate and his campaign.

Those mass resignations came after a rocky rollout for Gingrich, during which he criticized a controversial budget drafted by House Republicans. Gingrich also struggled with the revelation of a six-figure line of credit he’d maintained with the jeweler Tiffany’s, and an ill-timed Greek vacation he took with his wife Callista, an omnipresent figure on the campaign trail.

His campaign was considered all but dead after June 9, 2011 -- the day of those resignations. But students of his career could just as easily draw parallels with other scenes from the Gingrich political biography, moments when it also appeared his luck had run out.

“I think there's a little bit of Richard Nixon in Newt Gingrich. His political career was pronounced dead as many times as well,” said Craig Shirley, the GOP public affairs veteran with close ties to Gingrich. Shirley, a biographer of Reagan, is currently working on a political biography of Gingrich.

“He likes the high wire in the same way that Nixon did,” Shirley said of Gingrich. “They all like the high wire, but there's some who handle it better than others.”

There are many instances when, over the last three and a half decades, Gingrich had appeared to fall out of favor with both Republicans and voters at large. There were his failed early bids for Congress in the 1970s and clashes with Republican leaders throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

His biggest political achievement came in 1994, when Gingrich led Republicans to win back a majority in the House for the first time since 1954. But his tenure was well-documented for its internal and external tumult, and led to an attempted coup toward its end. Gingrich resigned amid growing Republican anger toward his leadership following the elections of 1998 – a dramatic development used to great effect by Mitt Romney’s campaign throughout the 2012 primaries.

That resignation might have otherwise meant the end for any other political figure, but the story of Newt Gingrich has always been a story of reinvention and resurrection.

In the more than 10 years since leaving Congress, Gingrich took on the persona of a party elder. He became a commentator on FOX News, a lucrative opportunity, and made millions more through consulting and the establishment of “Newt, Inc.,” the consortium of interest groups built in his name that has pervaded Washington.

His brand had been rehabilitated sufficiently enough by 2011 to wage a credible bid for the Republican presidential nomination, but Gingrich’s campaign was marked by the same turbulence that had defined his entire career.

Gingrich soldiered on following the June resignations, only to re-emerge in late November 2011 as the top choice of Republicans in the first nominating contest in Iowa, at least according to polls. But his presidential aspirations bottomed out again after suffering an onslaught of negative advertising from the Romney campaign.

Undeterred, Gingrich rebounded again to shock Romney in the South Carolina primary – the first time a candidate had won the influential primary since its inception without continuing to become the eventual Republican nominee.

Then came the Florida primary several days later, where Romney again dispensed with the former House speaker by using a barrage of critical advertisements. It was Gingrich’s last true gasp as a candidate. He retreated to Georgia, the state he had served as a member of Congress, and hitched his candidacy to winning that state – and only – on Super Tuesday.

Even in nearby Mississippi and Alabama several weeks later, Gingrich lost those primaries to Rick Santorum. His inability to score a meaningful win fueled perceptions of Gingrich as a kind of “ghost candidate,” even though he defiantly vowed to push forward with his campaign through the August convention in Tampa, where he would conceivably challenge Romney in a messy floor fight for the nomination.

His relationship with FOX lies in tatters following the publication of a report in which Gingrich made critical comments of the network before a private crowd. More significantly, the Center for Health Transformation – the crown jewel of Gingrich’s personal empire – was forced to file for bankruptcy in the former speaker’s absence. His campaign is millions in debt, and CHT’s bankruptcy will likely cost Gingrich some personal wealth, too.

Gingrich’s path to redemption – again – is steep, possibly steeper than at any previous point in his career.

That path begins with a speech at the Tampa convention this summer meant to unify Republicans behind Romney, despite the personal animosity over time between Romney and Gingrich, said Shirley.

“Newt has the ability to arrest people because he’s interesting,” said Rick Tyler of the attributes that might help Gingrich accomplish another turnaround. “That didn’t translate into people wanting him to be president.”

Fans of the former speaker assert that it would be inconceivable for Gingrich, at the least an irrepressible gadfly in Washington, to fade from public view.

When will Americans finally see Gingrich’s final act as a public figure?

“I guess when he's getting last rites,” Shirley said.

NBC News confirms that Newt Gingrich will suspend his presidential campaign on Tuesday, May 1 in Washington, DC, a senior campaign source says.

After a four-hour meeting last night, the former House speaker has decided to end his run. Tuesday was chosen for logistical reasons so his family can come up to the area and so forth.

There is a "high likelihood" he will endorse the GOP nominee at Tuesday's event.

CRAMERTON, NC –- Newt Gingrich finally admitted Wednesday morning that Mitt Romney will be the Republican Party’s nominee for president this year.

Addressing supporters inside a local diner here following a disappointing second place finish Tuesday night in Delaware's primary, Gingrich went a step closer toward ending his presidential race this morning, after hinting at it last night during his election night speech.

RELATED: Gingrich loses again, signals exit from race

"You have to, at some point, be honest about what's happening in the real world as opposed to what you would like to have happen. Gov. Romney had a very good day yesterday,” he said. “You have to give him some credit. This guy has worked 6 years, put together a big machine and has put together a serious campaign.”

The former House speaker went on to recognize Romney –- the former Massachusetts governor who swept all 5 primaries yesterday –- as the man who will compete against President Obama in the fall.

“I do think it's pretty clear that Gov. Romney is ultimately going to be the nominee and we'll do everything we can to make sure that he is, in fact, effective, and that we as a team are effective both in winning this fall and then, frankly, in governing," Gingrich said to the roughly 75 people in attendance, noting he still believes he would be a better candidate.

Calling himself a “citizen” multiple times inside Georgio’s Restaurant, the speaker vowed to stay involved in the presidential race and admitted he is working out the details of his “transition” this week (although would not define the meaning of his transition when asked by reporters following the event).

"We're going to stay very, very active,” Gingrich promised. “But I am committed to this party. I am committed to defeating Obama. We will find ways to try to be helpful."

Gingrich will continue “campaigning” in the Tar Heel State through Friday before heading back to Washington, D.C. to attend the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday night.