Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and MSNBC host Chris Matthews have always had a rocky relationship – Matthews has said that Gingrich “scares me” and said “dogs walk away when they see him.” That was mere prelude to today’s fireworks, however, when Gingrich appeared live on Matthews’ MSNBC program with topics that ranged from the GOP primaries to Romney’s vice presidential search and finally to Gingrich’s love of animals and zoos.Hardball

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union earlier, Newt Gingrich was asked about the relative influence of the Tea Party in Republican politics. Crowley brought up the hotly contested Indiana race between incumbent Senator Duck Lugar and Tea Party challenger Richard Mourdock, and how Lugar might finally see his political career end after decades of service. Gingrich did not take sides in the race, but did credit Mourdock with being aggressively conservative and predicted he would end up winning the primary.

On CNN’s State of the Union today, host Candy Crowley talked with Newt Gingrich in some depth about the current state of the Republican party. Gingrich defended the GOP from claims that it is not diverse enough, pointing to people who help make the party more racially and ideologically diverse. Crowley told Gingrich during the interview that a common perception of Republicans is that they’re just a “conservative bunch of white guys who want to protect big oil.”

On Thursday, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews brought retiring Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on his program to discuss a recently released book by Brookings Institution fellow Thomas Mann and American Enterprise Institute Scholar Norman Ornstein in which they find that the Republican party is responsible for dysfunction and gridlock between Congress and the executive branch. Frank lamented the present state of the Republican party, which just received a heavy influx of freshmen swept into Congress in the wave election of 2010, and offered advice to moderate Republicans: “If you’re a mainstream Republican, you want the current crowd of extremists to lose.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on Thursday where he was asked to describe what he believed were his biggest mistakes over the course of his nearly year-long presidential campaign. During the interview, Gingrich was forced to watch portions of an Obama campaign ad that features the Speaker’s attacks on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Fox News host Shepard Smith returned from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaigns suspension speech by implying that his network lost the vast majority of their viewers by covering the lengthy speech. “I don’t know anyone on his side of the aisle who can stand him anymore,” said Smith of Gingrich.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is set to officially end his campaign today, and briefly express his support for presumptive nominee Mitt Romney (he’s expected to make an official official endorsement in a week or so), and while blunting the impact of a Gingrich endorsement is like trying to stop a runaway freight train made of balsa wood, the Obama campaign has made the effort anyway. The President’s reelection campaign released an ad ahead of the mini-endorsement that features some of Gingrich’s greatest Romney hits.

The final word is in: Newt Gingrich is officially dropping his presidential bid on Wednesday. Earlier reports said Gingrich would bow out on Tuesday, but sources close to the candidate have confirmed that Wednesday will be the candidate’s last hoorah before conceding victory to Mitt Romney. Romney entered general election mode after Rick Santorum dropped out weeks ago, but Gingrich continued to stay in the race.

SEX. Now that I’ve got your attention, Bill Maher has a few words he’d like to say. In his show-ending New Rule tonight, Maher went after the media for pursuing the most titillating details of the Secret Service prostitution scandal instead of something more seriously important. While President Obama went to Colombia for a summit with Latin American leaders, it has not matched the media coverage of the Secret Service scandal because, as Maher argued, the media is so obsessed with sex they should be starting all of its coverage of the scandal with “Dear Penthouse.”

With the general election beginning in earnest (now that Newt Gingrich has decided to stand down), the effect of independent organizations on this election will be put to the test. The Karl Rove-co-founded American Crossroads, one of several pro-Republican SuperPACs expected to raise hundreds of millions in unlimited contributions to defeat President Obama this election, has released a new ad attacking the President’s “cool.”

On Wednesday night, TBS’ Conan O’Brien enlisted the help of sidekick / talented impersonator Andy Richter to help him bid a fond farewell to Newt Gingrich as the former GOP presidential hopeful prepares to officially bow out of the race next week.

Jon Stewart clearly had little interest in talking about the 2012 presidential race today. And who could blame him, when people are trying to mine asteroids and Neil DeGrasse Tyson is sitting backstage solving a Rubik’s cube? Stewart did, however, finally turn to yesterday’s primary and all it represented– from Newt Gingrich dropping out to President Obama “slow-jamming” the news with Jimmy Fallon.

Even the tamest election nights tend to be a bit busy, and last night NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell sighed exasperatedly at the stress of her job– she had to follow both Mitt Romney‘s and Newt Gingrich‘s speeches simultaneously. Whether she was grumbling over the fact that she had to watch these two Republicans or merely over the strain of the job was a matter of contention on The O’Reilly Factor tonight, where Bill O’Reilly criticized the anchor for being blatantly liberal on many occasions.

Newt Gingrich will officially end his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and endorse presumptive nominee Mitt Romney next week, CNN political director Mark Preston reports.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign is winding down to a close. Gingrich has said that he will be “reassessing” his presidential campaign depending on Tuesday’s primary election results from Delaware – where the Gingrich campaign has rested all its hopes.

While campaigning with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Pennsylvania today, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney waxed nostalgic over his days in France, not over his Vietnam-era missionary work, but of vacations spent in the European jewel, and of vacations he hopes to spend there. Romney was attacked by rival Newt Gingrich over his French connection, but what effect will this luxury-mongering (in stark contrast to his proscription on “elaborate vacations” for presidents) have on general election voters?

A non-partisan group recently found that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received more favorable media coverage over the course of the Republican primary race than any of his GOP competitors and even President Obama. On Monday, Jim Pinkerton, editor with the American Conservative Magazine, and radio host and Fox News contributor Alan Colmes battled over whether the media has a liberal bias or if their reporting simply observes and reports reality and is then blamed for shaping it.

Former New York City Mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday to endorse Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and suggest that he is a competent candidate that can defeat President Obama in November.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus is waiting on Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul before his party can officially say the general election has begun. This he told Jessica Yellin on John King USA last night, when asked repeatedly why he would not exercise the power of his position and just tell the last two remaining Republican candidates to go away. “People are tired of folks in Washington telling them what they should do,” he explained, responding that he wanted voters to decide whether Rep. Paul and Gingrich should remain in the race.

It’s one of the political games people play: trying to get political figures to own something that someone else said. A particularly egregious example of this was last week’s Hilary Rosen flap, when the media and the Obama administration foolishly played along. But while Rosen had no connection to the President whatsoever (and really said nothing wrong), Republican candidate Mitt Romney actively sought the endorsement of serial mouth-bomber Ted Nugent, and ought to be asked if he agrees with him.

A reporter for the University of North Carolina’s paper, The Daily Tar Heel, wrote a piece describing an interview with GOP hopeful (he’s still in the race, in case you forgot) Newt Gingrich. While the student was told no topics were off limits, when Roger Ailes‘ remark about Gingrich came up, an aide immediately shot it down — cutting off the interview altogether.

In a candid discussion of his media coverage over the course of the Republican primary process, Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney heaped praise on Fox News Channel for their coverage of his campaign and singled out CNN’s Wolf Blitzer who he described as a good interviewer.

Now that Rick Santorum is out of the race, Mitt Romney‘s most formidable roadblock to winning the Republican nomination has been removed. However, Newt Gingrich is still running for president despite the almost-insurmountable odds against him. The Republican party and the media have pretty much accepted that the general election has started and the GOP is fully getting behind Romney, but Gingrich is calling for his former conservative rival to lend him his support to keep his message alive.

Fox News has responded to Newt Gingrich‘s recent remark that he believes “Fox has been for Romney all the way through” and that “Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox.”

On the heels of reporting on the Newt Gingrich campaign’s Tigger-esque checkbook, Current TV’s The Young Turks interviewed a small businessman who says he was stiffed by the presidential (still) (mystifyingly) hopeful. TYT contributor Michael Shure interviewed Las Vegas businessman Larry Scheffler, who says Gingrich owes him about $8,000.00, and that even though Gingrich blew him off on the phone when he tried to collect, he would still vote for the former House Speaker over President Obama.