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.

BALTIMORE, MD -- Newt Gingrich considers himself a man of “really big ideas” and has used his presidential run to share them with thousands of Americans.

The former House speaker faced criticism from opponents for being “grandiose,” which prompted Gingrich to respond in January: “I accept the charge that I am grandiose and that Americans are instinctively grandiose."

While Gingrich continues fighting the increasingly uphill battle of trying to become the Republican nominee, here is a recap of some of the more fantastical ideas he has thrown out over the past 10 months of the campaign.

CREATING A MOON COLONY
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American." – Cocoa, FL 1.25.12

AP / Evan Vucci

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, center, and his wife Callista, tour the Wilheit Packaging factory in Gainesville, Ga.

DESTINY IN SPACE
“I want to restate, far from backing off, I want to restate, America has a destiny in space. It is a part of who we are. We are not going to back off from John Kennedy’s challenge and we are not going to go timidly into the night allowing the Chinese to dominate the future of space.” – Huntsville, AL 3.6.12

SEND PACKAGE TO ILLEGALS
“UPS and FedEx move twenty four million packages a day and track them in virtually real time. Over here is the federal government, the world that fails. And let me give you an example of what I’m talking about: twenty four million packages tracked while they move; eleven million illegal visitors sitting still. Or 15 million. One of my proposals is very simple. We send a package to every person who’s here illegally. When it’s delivered, we pull it up, we know exactly where they are. It’s on the computer.” – Council Bluffs, IA 11.30.11

NATIONAL SECURITY
“You think about an Iranian nuclear weapon.  You think about the dangers – to Cleveland, or to Columbus, or to Cincinnati, or to New York.   Remember what it felt like on 9/11 when 3100 Americans were killed.  Now imagine an attack where you add 2 zeros.  And it’s 300,000 dead.  Maybe a half million wounded.  This is a real danger.  This is not science fiction.  That’s why I think it’s important that we have the strongest possible national security.” – Cleveland, OH 2.8.12

CHANGE ALL OF AMERICA
“You have a bipartisan establishment that has been running this country, that has created a gigantic mess.  You have bureaucracies that are out of control, judges who think they can be dictators.  You have systems around this country.  You have laws that don’t work.  So, we have got to change not just Obama, we have got to change the entire direction of the United States of America to get it back on track and that is our obligation to these young people." – Rock Hill, SC 1.11.12

HOW TO FIX GAS PRICES
“The long-term answer is American’s producing their own energy and telling other people, ‘you may have a problem, we don’t because we can be the largest oil producer in the world by the end of this decade. Bigger than Russia, bigger than Saudi Arabia. We have vastly more resources than any other country if we use them.” – San Francisco, CA 2.25.12

AFGHANISTAN
“We’re not going to fix Afghanistan.  It’s not possible…There’s some problems where what you have to do is say, ‘You know, you’re going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life because I’m not here – you clearly don’t want to hear from me how to be unmiserable.’  And that’s what you’re going to see happen.” – Nashville, TN 2.27.12

ISLAMIC WORLD
“I believe we need to reassess every element of our relationship with the Islamic world and we need to be prepared to do whatever it takes to become economically independent and to be able to tell the truth. And American president who cannot tell the truth cannot possibly defend this country.” – Rome, GA 2.28.12

MEET WITH DEMOCRATS AND PUT THEM IN GROUPS
”Between the election and the inauguration, I will try to meet with every Democrat individually and sit down with them face to face and say look I’m going to be here for four years and what is it that you’re trying to get done that’s compatible with what I’m trying to get down. Now, they’ll break down into three groups. There will be the crazies. We won’t invite them back. There will be hardheaded guys who you can get occasionally. And there will be folks who say I’m glad we’re trying to do this together, let’s see what we can get done.” – Mobile, AL 3.10.12

PAY-PER-VIEW DEBATE
”Let me just say to the president: I will be glad to debate him anywhere, any time, and I’ll go a step further just to make it non-political. We ought to debate on pay-per-view and we ought to charge ten bucks to watch the debate, and it ought to go to a charity of our mutual choice, and it would be the largest charity fundraiser in the country this year. And the topic ought to be price of gasoline.” – Shreveport, LA 3.20.12

ATTITUDE OF MODERN WORLD
“The psychological attitude of the modern world is such that if Thomas Edison invented the electric light in the modern era, it would be reported on the network news as the candle making industry was threatened today. And somebody on the left would jump up and say this was all an excuse for killing poor people by putting electricity in their homes, and who knows what the electricity will do to them. And is this really a gamble to electrocute people? Think about -- Everything we do nowadays is negative.” – Frederick, MD 4.2.12

OBAMA/BIRTHDAY CAKE RECIPE
“If you went to somebody who was a great cook and you said ‘do you think you can bake a birthday cake’ and they said ‘sure I can bake a birthday cake,’ the odds are pretty high they’ll be able to bake a birthday cake. Now it helps to have a recipe for birthday cakes and it helps to have baked one. President Obama’s biggest challenge is, that he has exactly the wrong ideas. He belongs to an ideology that believes the way you get hard eggs is you freeze them (laughs)…. This is his whole problem with job creation.” – Dyersville, IA 12.27.11

FOOD STAMPS
“And so I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention to talk about why the African American community should demand pay checks and not be satisfied with food stamps. And I’ll go to them and I’ll explain a brand new social security opportunity for young people, which would be particularly good for African American males, because they’re the group that gets the smallest return on social security…” – Plymouth, NH 1.5.12

PAY KIDS TO WORK
“You have a very poor neighborhood. You have kids who are required under law to go to school. They have no money, they have habit of work. But what if you paid them part time in the afternoon to sit in the clerical office and greet people that came in. What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian? And I’d pay them as early as was reasonable and practical. And then we get into the janitor thing. These letters were written saying janitorial work is really hard and really dangerous. Fine. So what if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom and you pay them?” – Des Moines, IA 12.1.11

BEAR ARMS IN OUR TRUCKS
“You can’t put a gun rack in a Volt. So, let’s be clear what this election is all about. We believe in the right to bear arms and we like to bare the arms in our truck, there.” – Peachtree City, GA 2.17.12

NOT BOW TO SAUDI KING
“If you would like to have a national American energy policy, never again bow to a Saudi king and pay $2.50 a gallon, Newt Gingrich will be your candidate.” – San Francisco, CA 2.25.12

IRAN
“We should indicate calmly and decisively that any act to close the Straits of Hormuz will be considered an act of war and we will eliminate the government of Iran.” – Knoxville, TN 3.5.12

IMMIGRATION
“I think the vast majority of them should go home. And we should be very clear about this. If you are here without any great ties to the United States and you came here illegally, you just need to leave and apply for the guest worker program from back home. Period…I do think that if you have somebody in your neighborhood who has been here for 25 years, and they belong to your church and they have three kids and two grandkids, and they have been paying taxes and working hard the entire time, it’s going to be very, very hard to get the American people to agree that we should tear up those families and expel them.” – Naples, FL 11.25.11

COURTS
“I do think it’s legitimate for the Congress and the president to address the 9th circuit’s aggressive anti-religious bias but I think that will be done with other methods. I’d ask the Congress to look seriously at either impeaching or replacing the 9th circuit.” – South El Monte, CA 1.15.12

GINGRICH TREATY
“I proposed yesterday what Chris Cox of the NRA called the Gingrich Treaty. As president, I would propose that the United States submit a treaty that says that the right to bear arms is a universal human right and that every human being on the planet should have the right to bear arms. That the Second Amendment should apply everywhere." – Raleigh, NC 4.14.12

BRAIN SCIENCE RESEARCH
"The number of things we'll learn by learning about the brain will absolutely pay for itself probably by a thousand to one or better. Literally in terms of cost to the government … This is a very big idea in an area that I don't know of any political leader who is willing to tackle that would lead to a dramatic explosion of new science that would lead directly to a better quality outcome for health which would lower the cost of healthcare which would help solve our long term budget problems and would create a huge new zone of creating American jobs. But it requires having a conversation in an area the people just aren't used to talking about politically.” – Iowa City, IA 12.14.12

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at the 2012 New York Republican State Dinner on April 19, 2012 in New York City. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance has urged Gingrich to give up his Secret Service protection, which he has had for about a month, in order to save taxpayer dollars.

NEW YORK -- Speaking before several thousand Republicans Thursday evening, Newt Gingrich said he is committed to having a “unified” party going forward and seemed to change his rhetoric towards the GOP presidential frontrunner.
 
Gingrich, giving remarks at the New York State Committee Annual Dinner, vowed that whether he or Mitt Romney become the nominee, they will work together to defeat President Obama in the fall.
 
“If I were to become the nominee, he [Romney] would work all out because it is our grandchildren’s future at stake. If he becomes the nominee, Callista and I will work out because it is our grandchildren’s future at stake,” the former House speaker promised, acknowledging he is clearly the underdog. “The fact is, we are dedicated to a unified Republican Party, winning the presidency on behalf of America’s future.”
 
Late last month, campaigning in Green Bay, Wis., Gingrich said while he is going to Tampa and is committed to party unity it was only with a caveat.
 
“We are deeply committed to going to Tampa, we are deeply committed to fighting for these ideas, that we are prepared to compete all the way, that while I am committed to party unity I think it ought to be party unity for a purpose, with a platform that matters and with ideas that enable us to say to the American people if you hire us, we’re not just anti-Obama, we are pro success for America and here are ideas that will make America successful,” he said at Kroll’s West Restaurant on March 30.
 
Thursday night’s speech at a New York City hotel seemed to take a different tone – a much more conciliatory tone from Gingrich. He reiterated he has stayed in the GOP race to articulate big themes and big issues across the country.
 
The keynote speaker at tonight’s annual dinner was potential vice presidential candidate, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.
 
After taking the stage following a bagpiper, Gingrich praised Gov. Jindal as “one of the brightest people in all of American politics.”
 
Gingrich heads to upstate New York Friday for one public event in Buffalo.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich once led his rivals for the nomination in polls. Today, he's millions in debt and describing Mitt Romney as "far and away the most likely" GOP nominee.

Running for president "turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be," he said Sunday.

"I do think there's a desire for a more idea-oriented Republican Party, but that doesn't translate necessarily to being able to take on the Romney machine," Gingrich told "Fox News Sunday" in a reflective interview.

After his Jan. 21 victory in the South Carolina primary, the former House Speaker said the Florida primary he lost in the following days turned into a "real brawl." He said Romney did a good job building a substantial machine, adding he has no regrets.

"Unfortunately, our guys tried to match Romney," Gingrich said of the Florida match-up. "It turned out, we didn't have anything like his capacity to raise money."

Gingrich said he has a little less than $4.5 million in campaign debt, and he's operating on a shoestring budget.

Despite Gingrich's acknowledgment of what appears to be his inevitable defeat, the former House speaker Gingrich isn't ready to drop out. Gingrich wants to influence the party's platform, which is a statement of principles on the issues. He's interested in promoting increased domestic oil production and personal Social Security savings accounts.

But, if Romney secures the nomination, Gingrich said he'll campaign for him.

"I hit him as hard as I could. He hit me as hard as he could. It turned out he had more things to hit with than I did. And, that's part of the business. He's done the fundraising side brilliantly," Gingrich said.

Gingrich has had a campaign full of ups and downs. Just weeks after entering the race last year, his campaign imploded. Months later, in the weeks before the Iowa caucuses, he surged. He came in behind Romney and Rick Santorum in Iowa, but won South Carolina. He had several losses before winning his home state of Georgia. He had hoped to carry the momentum of that win to other contests in the South, so far unsuccessfully.

Ann Heisenfelt / AP

Newt Gingrich listens at left, as his wife Callista introduces him during a campaign stop at Hood College in Frederick, Md., Monday, April 2, 2012.

MILLSBORO, Del. - A full month has passed since Newt Gingrich has won a Republican presidential primary contest. And that victory, of course, came in his former home state of Georgia.

Since then, so much has changed for Gingrich and his campaign.

Related: Gingrich still in, says Romney likely GOP nominee

On a typical day a few weeks ago, Gingrich's staff was everywhere at campaign events: his chief of staff, his campaign spokesman, his bodyman, his press director, his bus director, his advance staff.

Now? Gingrich has mostly been traveling just with his spokesman and Secret Service protection. That bodyman, who used to appear with Gingrich everywhere he went, was dispatched to run the campaign's North Carolina effort.

Callista, Gingrich’s wife, has even begun holding some events on her own, taking both her and a couple staffers out of the usual entourage.

After a third of Gingrich's staff were let go, the plug was pulled on most of their advance staff and production crews -- resulting in lower-key events.

Patriotic music no longer plays at events when the candidate and his wife take the stage. The traditional American flag backdrops have disappeared. And gone are the sound system and riser platform for media.

The traveling press bus that kicked off in Iowa on Dec. 27 ended late last month in Louisiana. Now just three network television embeds -- no print reporters at all -- are left covering Gingrich’s longshot bid fulltime. Local reporters still flock to his events, but national outlets tend to come only when Romney or Santorum are in the same area.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Newt Gingrich addresses a campaign town hall-style meeting at the Hodson Auditorium on the campus of Hood College, April 2, 2012 in Frederick, Md.

Gingrich acknowledged last week that it doesn’t bother him “much” that many embedded reporters are no longer covering his campaign. “Much as I like some of them personally, look, people are going to have to decide what they want to cover,” he said outside the state house in Annapolis, Md., on March 27. “Everywhere I go, we get a lot of coverage.”

And then there are the crowds, which have dwindled some over the past month. But people are still coming out to hear the former House speaker. Thursday night, Gingrich drew a couple hundred people to two campaign rallies at firehouses in Delaware.

Even the number of events are now smaller. During the month of January, it was typical for four to six events to be on Gingrich’s schedule on any given day. Recently, the candidate may only hold one. And the election night parties that started in Iowa have slowly been phased out by the campaign.

But these changes do not (at least on the surface) seem to faze Gingrich.

“I am happy with how it [the campaign] is being run right now,” Gingrich said Thursday night.

He still has a smile on his face each day, makes frequent stops at zoos (at least four since the start of the year), historical landmarks, and numerous state capitols [at least eight since the start of the year].

Gingrich genuinely seems to be enjoying his run for the country’s highest office.

Stopping at Orville Wright’s home in Dayton, Ohio, Gingrich commented to his wife, “That was fun.” After a recent stop at the Salisbury, Md., zoo, he told a crowd at the local university, “It was cool.” And he admitted he had always wanted to be “a zoo director.”

To be sure, this situation for Gingrich is very similar to how it was back in the late summer, after most of his staff quit the campaign.

Little staff, few reporters, some smaller crowds, limited resources at events -- but a cheerful man running for president.

MILWAUKEE, Wisc. -- Making his first campaign stop in the Badger State, Newt Gingrich was quick to share his Wisconsin ties.

“We own a share of Green Bay stock so we have ties to the whole state in that sense,” Gingrich said, adding that his wife, Callista, grew up here and her mother still resides in White Hall.

The former House Speaker addressed a few hundred people at Marquette University and wrapped up his almost hour-long lecture speaking about the popular Wisconsin Congressman, Paul Ryan.

Gingrich praised the Wisconsin native hours after the Republican budget passed the house and just as news began to speculate that Ryan would endorse Mitt Romney before Tuesday’s primary in the state.

“His budget is very, very positive and it’s very exciting,” the Speaker said, acknowledging that Ryan responded well to critiques. “His budget is dramatically better than the Congressional Budget Office will score it because the bureaucrats at CBO completely misunderstand the power of people changing their behavior and it’s really unfortunate.”

Ryan, who represents Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional district, saw his $3.5 trillion budget plan pass the House Thursday will all but ten Republicans voting in favor of it.
 
But last May, Gingrich referred to Ryan’s plan as “right wing social engineering,” showing little admiration for the Republican budget proposal on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Tonight, Gingrich’s tone was different, and he said his remarks last spring were “vastly overblown by the news media.”

“I’ve always endorsed his [Ryan’s] proposal to block grant Medicare, I mean Medicaid, I think it’s a good idea. And I admire both his intelligence and his courage because he’s doing a lot of things,” he said.

While tonight mark’s Gingrich’s first appearance in the state, Callista has been campaigning on her husband’s behalf all week – her first solo campaign trip all cycle.

While there were few applause lines for Gingrich in the college auditorium, there was a lively back and forth between one attendee and the Speaker over where your rights come from.

After listening to Gingrich describe “American values,” a man questioned if Gingrich meant specifically Christian values and how that is fair under the first amendment and freedom of religion.

“What about people who maybe are agnostic or atheist. What about those Americans?” the man in the audience, who left as soon as the interaction was over, asked.

“They can live here but they have no explanation of where their rights come,” Gingrich shot back.

This back and forth continued for almost five minutes until the Speaker finally said, “next question.”

Gingrich, who is struggling to remain seen as a credible candidate, holds three events in Wisconsin on Friday – including a Green Bay Brats and Beer Rally.

In the latest evidence that Newt Gingrich isn’t exiting the GOP race anytime soon, the former House speaker ended a closed-door meeting on Wednesday with his backers in Congress poised to push ahead with his campaign, possibly through the June 5 primary in California.

When he sat down this week with 10 of the 11 lawmakers who have endorsed him, each of them took turns offering their assessment of the health of the Gingrich candidacy. While some of the lawmakers expressed misgivings about the toll his continuing in the race would take on the eventual Republican nominee, none of them called on Gingrich to drop out.

Four of the attendees, who spoke with NBCPolitics.com, said that Gingrich's interest in staying in the race is driven by a desire to advance certain policy proposals in the primary and general elections.

“We believe that Newt staying in there is very helpful to the conservative cause,” said Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, who was among the attendees. “I think Newt was realistic and saying there is a path.”

Still, Kingston added, “He didn't use the word longshot, but it's difficult.”

Gingrich reached the apex of his political strength this primary season when he won South Carolina’s influential primary on Jan. 21.

But in the two months since that point, the ex-speaker, pummeled by negative ads in Florida and succeeding primary states, has seen his support once again hit the bottom. He finished a distant third in Louisiana’s primary; Rick Santorum, who’s assumed the role of Mitt Romney’s chief conservative alternative, won that caucus.

Not having won another primary besides the Super Tuesday contest in Georgia -- the state which elected Gingrich to Congress -- the campaign has struggled to regain any momentum. Gingrich laid off a third of his staff this week and severely curtailed travel, prompting political observers to wonder when he would finally drop out.

“I encouraged him to do what he feels is in his heart he has to do,” said Texas Rep. Michael Burgess, who attended the gathering.

But to hear the members of Congress who attended the meeting describe its outcome, Gingrich appears no closer to ending his candidacy.

“We kind of came to a collective conclusion that there were still some significant goals and objectives that could be achieved by him maintaining his place in the race," said Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, another participant in the meeting.

Related: Gingrich axes third of staff, cuts travel

In addition to Kingston, Burgess and Franks, another seven congress members attended: Reps. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., Austin Scott, R-Ga., Tom Price, R-Ga., Joe Barton, R-Texas, Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Dan Lungren, R-Calif.

The outstanding question now is not whether Newt will be the nominee, but rather, when will he exit the race, and how much collateral damage will have been done to the Republican nominee when Gingrich does drop out.

Those who did attend described a campaign that is realistic that its odds of winning the nomination are especially long. But, unless Romney were to begin regularly steamrolling his primary opponents in upcoming contests, the lawmakers said Gingrich was likely to stay in the race until the May 29 primary in Texas (where he has the endorsement of Gov. Rick Perry), or the primary a week later in California.

“I think the endgame is that we won't know what it's going to be until after Texas,” said one of the Republicans who went to the meeting, who was granted anonymity to speak more candidly about the closed-door huddle.

“I still think he's got a shot in Texas,” added that lawmaker, who noted that the slower pace of forthcoming primaries might allow Gingrich to conserve resources and survive through those contests.

But the former speaker still faces significant hurdles, not least of which was the public warning by Sheldon Adelson -- the casino magnate who’s primarily financed a supportive super PAC -- that Gingrich was “at the end of his line.”

A significant factor in Gingrich’s thinking involves whether his continued presence in the race would harm the party, or even his own political legacy.

Gingrich remains a prominent figure in the conservative movement despite the fizzling of his campaign.

If his candidacy were to stretch to the point where it hurts the party, it could threaten the generosity of conservative donors, on whose largesse Gingrich’s private endeavors sometimes depend.

The speaker’s sense was that if he were to leave the race, the media coverage he’s gained as a candidate would evaporate. By staying in the race, one of the lawmakers present said, Gingrich believes he “would have a great opportunity to drive some planks of the platform,” especially as it relates to some pet issues on health care, science and national security.

But the congressmen also said that Gingrich understood the long odds posed by the math, and described the speaker’s understanding that Santorum’s position in the race has made it difficult to challenge Romney one-on-one.

Moreover, Romney continues to amass delegates and prominent endorsements, most recently on Wednesday from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who said he backed Romney in part to forestall a messy convention fight -- the type Gingrich would need to orchestrate to make good on those long odds of becoming the Republican nominee.

“If you talk to people in the conference, you've got some people who want it over. You've got some people who have people in the race and want to see them do better,” said Westmoreland, a supporter of Gingrich. “Kind of a mixed bag, but I do think it would be nice to have your nominee on the same page as we are with our agenda. Trying to nail that down has been kind of hard.”

“The one thing that is there is, whoever our nominee is, they're going to have 242 people behind him,” he added.

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.

DELAVAN LAKE, Wisc. -- Despite news of a dramatic cutback in Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign staff, Rick Santorum is still refusing to call for the former House Speaker to leave the race.

"I think it is time for all the Republican candidates to coalesce behind me. You know, let's just have a conservative nominee to take on Barack Obama. Until that time happens, I'm not going to call on anyone to get out," Santorum said Tuesday night.

The former Pennsylvania senator spent the day campaigning through Wisconsin.  As he greeted patrons at restaurant here during his last stop, reporters told him of the reports that Gingrich had cut a third of his paid staff, including his campaign manager.  The news was met with a wince and head shake.

"One of the things I was told very early on in presidential politics is that you run for president as long as the money hangs on," said Santorum.  "Obviously, financially, it's tough. I can certainly understand that. So, I don't know what his plans are. As I've said before, were going to run the race irrespective of who's in and who's out."

Santorum said his campaign has not reached out to Gingrich, but that they "exchanged pleasantries" when they both met with the same group of reporters in Washington, DC on Monday.

Though Santorum has continually refused to call on Gingrich to leave the race, both he and senior staffers have blamed the waning GOP candidate for cutting into his vote totals and preventing a serious challenge to frontrunner Mitt Romney. Senior strategist John  Brabender has in the past openly welcomed Gingrich to be a top voice for Santorum's campaign and has also said they would like to hire his staffers.

But even as a contender fades away, the road continues to be a tough one for Santorum.  Polls show him struggling in the Badger State, where he is being heavily outspent.

He'll spend the majority of the time between now and Tuesday's primary in Wisconsin.