Newt Gingrich will officially suspend his campaign later today, and he tells Susan Page that he and Mitt Romney will make a joint appearance expressing their unity in a few weeks.
"Mitt Romney met the first criteria of being a good candidate: He won.... Now you have to respect that." He added, "We sure didn't give it to him. We did everything we could to slug it out with him, and he ended up being tough enough and being good enough at raising money" to prevail.
A nice little bonus for Gingrich? Page reports that the Romney campaign and RNC have "offered to be helpful as Gingrich works to retire his campaign debt."
Whether that has anything to do with it or not, Newt's public attitude couldn't be more different from Santorum's. Rick still hasn't embraced Romney or indicated he'll do so without a vague and large set of concessions and promises; and, by most accounts, is still quite bitter.
As for Newt, the "angry, little attack muffin", as Peggy Noonan famously described him, has continued to cool down and is now approaching room temperature.
