(FORTUNE Magazine) – As usual, Washington's political elite is noisily discussing, declaiming, declaring, deploring, dissing, denying--and dissembling. Except for the Republicans, who are neither seen nor heard. In the great political dramas of 1998--the sex wars and the policy disputes--the Republicans are the jackals that didn't bark. Theirs is the silence of the lam. They are delighted by the President's problems, but they're also distracted and divided. The resulting vacuum is beginning to worry party elders who know that, despite the dismissal of the Paula Jones case, the Republican Congress is eventually going to have to deal with the allegations against President Clinton. And probably sooner rather than later.

On the surface, life in the Republican conference is serene, at least compared with last summer, when Newt Gingrich's closest friends fought over who would hoist the Speaker's head on a picket. Scratch the surface, though, and House Republicans are fighting with maces. They're tangling over abortion, school vouchers, and gun control; over whether the Ten Commandments should be posted in public buildings; over whether House Majority Leader Dick Armey is the public face they want to put forward when Gingrich departs; and over who will represent the GOP Congress when independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr completes his inquiry.

One reason the Republicans took a 75-day recess, the longest since 1965, was to keep their squabbling to a minimum. Lawmakers will be in Washington so little this year, Gingrich hopes, they won't have time to mess with questions close to the heart of social conservatives and the religious right. So far the strategy is working. Congress has renamed a post office for Larry Doby, a federal center for Sam Nunn, and National Airport for Ronald Reagan--and has done almost nothing else. But a group of fiercely determined conservatives is pressing the leadership to take up social issues. That may shape the emerging struggle between Armey and Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston to replace Gingrich. Both men are economic conservatives, but Livingston has softer edges.

Armey may try to shore up his support among social conservatives by helping to move their issues to the floor. The House is planning to vote again (and again) on abortion, starting with another vote against partial-birth abortion. The next target: an offensive against late-term abortions. "This is the best way to make inroads," says Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma, one of the House's leading conservatives. Though moderate Republicans cringe at the prospect of floor fights on such issues, especially in these times, they acknowledge they cannot avoid an abortion vote. "But on guns and affirmative action and some of the rest of this stuff, the conservatives are out of touch with the rest of the country," says Rep. Sherwood Boehlert of New York, a leading moderate. "They represent the views of a distinct minority, distinct but vocal."

All this comes as Capitol Hill girds for the day when Starr unloads his findings at Congress' door. But for now the Republicans--consumed with their own problems, not the President's--are worried about the social issues on the floor, not the allegations of antisocial behavior in the White House. They came to office arguing they didn't believe in government. Now they're proving they don't much believe in governing either.

DAVID SHRIBMAN is Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter.