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"\n\nVisit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy\n\n\"I'm so impressed with your discipline and the way you've lost weight,\" Newt Gingrich told his trim, longtime political adversary and real life frenemy Al Sharpton on the latter's MSNBC show last night. \"I'm just in admiration of you and I want you to know that I'm starting this show a little bit awestruck. You've shown enormous discipline and you're a role model for all of us who need to follow in your culinary footsteps.\"\n\nIt's been six weeks since Gingrich dropped out of the presidential race, and the former Speaker, who for much of the campaign (even when he was winning) seemed tired, combative and cranky, now seems...well, not tanned, but definitely rested and ready.\n\nSharpton played a newsreel of all of those really uncomfortable things Newt kept saying during the primary\u2014about Obama being a food stamp president, about how the NAACP should demand paychecks rather than food stamps, that at the \"largest urban housing projects\" there are \"remarkably few people who have work experience\"\u2014and demanded to know why Gingrich had resorted to dog whistle politics.\n\nGingrich professed genuine shock. \"Well, let me start with my surprise that having a conservative Republican who actually cares that there is 43 percent black teenage black unemployment\u2014I would think is a good thing,\" he said. \"Having a conservative Republican who's eager to go to the NAACP and meet with them to talk about real issues is a good thing. I'd say same thing about La Raza and my concern for Latinos who are unemployed. It's a fact in America when you have hard times they're harder for ethnic minorities than they are for whites. We need a greater level of concern.\"\n\nSharpton kept up the attack, pointing out that most of the people on food stamps are in fact white, but Gingrich played the role of good MSNBC guest\u2014he stayed calm, kept a smile on his face, and finally settled with this uncharacteristically humble comment: \"I may not be saying it exactly right, and I'm not going to claim, as a college teacher, a white Republican, that I get this in all exactly the right language.\" He promised to travel with Sharpton to housing developments to learn more.\n\nIs this a new Newt Gingrich? Well no, not exactly. Before his presidential campaign (and even during it, while the cameras were off) reporters knew him as a guy who gamely engaged in intellectual debate with them, even as he was savaging the elite liberal media any time the boom mics appeared. This iteration of Newt\u2014the one who debates Chris Matthews on his favorite zoo animals, then reduces the cast of \"Morning Joe\" to a fit of giggles by asserting that Matthews is \"just slightly wacked\"\u2014is the one reporters and television personalities liked, and it's a role Gingrich seems happy to play.\n\n\"You're just a supplicant now?\" a playful Matthews asked him when he appeared on his a few weeks ago.\n\nGingrich grinned and tilted his chin at the TV host. \"I'm not a supplicant,\" he said. \"I'm a team player.\"\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012:\n\nThe Ultra-Pundits Check in: Carville on Obama's Chances and Matalin on Romney's Response Operation\n\n[Mark Kelly On The Lessons From Arizona's Special Election\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1xhi5rOTM)\n\n[Shh! Five Joe Biden Life Lessons the White House Doesn't Want You to Know\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1xhiG5CPO)\n\n[Butt To Butt: Spike Lee On Barack's Advantage\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1xhiOpwlx)\n\nFollow GQPolitics on Twitter for more updates from the campaign trail.\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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