WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It is surely not an accident that those mad scientists in Scotland decided to clone sheep first, rather than some more ferocious species such as a pit bull. On the other hand, if they really wanted to downplay the threatening portent of the technology, they might have cloned a Republican congressman instead.

There are two equal and opposite errors in democratic politics: the word without the deed, and the deed without the word. In the 104th Congress, the Republicans committed the first error with their chest-thumping talk of "revolution." The new 105th Congress seems headed for the second error. The learning curve for the new Republican majority is not just kinked; it seems to be inverted.

At first it was thought that the lamblike demeanor of Capitol Hill Republicans was a deliberate strategy of playing possum while the roof falls in on Clinton. This is a huge mistake, on several levels. Even if the Republicans decide just to legislate quietly without making any bold pronouncements, it leaves the realm of public opinion undefended from the relentless rhetorical attack from the Left. Politics consists above all in making -and winning -public arguments. Republicans have always tended to neglect the rhetorical requirements of public life, which is why the occasional exceptions to this rule, such as Reagan or Gingrich, always stand out so far above the Republican rabble. The trouble with the present moment is that the Republican rhetorical regression to the inarticulate mean might well portend a regression at the polls sometime down the road.

What accounts for the lethargy of Republicans? Among other things, my guess is that some pollster or focus group maven has been pressing the Republican leadership with the theme that the people don't like "partisan bickering." It isn't "nice," and we're all nice people now. It is as though all the lessons of Newt Gingrich's rise have been forgotten.

The current scene on Capitol Hill reminds us of Churchill's description of that flaccid period between the wars: "Fight? I can't see any fight. All I can see in this Parliament is a lot of people leaning against each other." Hill Republicans would do well to heed Benjamin Disraeli's searing description of the Conservative Party in his novel Coningsby: "Conservatism discards prescription, shrinks from principle, disavows progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future." Not long after Disraeli wrote this, the Conservative Party in Britain lost power for nearly 40 years.

-By Steven Hayward