Now comes the hard part.

With the no-win agony of the impeachment process over, Republicans are eager to get back to the policy process. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has announced an ambitious "fast-track" schedule for the next six months. House Speaker Dennis Hastert already has begun to reach for bipartisan issues and votes.

If impeachment seemed to drag on interminably, the fact is mid-February is usually the starting point for a new Congress in a typically inertia-bound process.

And the Republican majority in Congress has one other piece of good news to rely on: President Clinton is at least as eager as they are to move to policymaking.

For the GOP, the need to focus on issues and policy is greater than the simple reality that impeachment per se has been a political disaster for them. Not only do Americans fault Republicans for putting the country through this, they also have begun to define the Republican Party in impeachment, rather than philosophical, terms. So Republicans feel a sense of urgency to convince Americans that their party stands for less taxes and less government, not just for a zeal to damage Clinton and remove him from office at all costs.

The Republican leaders' strategy here is clear. They want to defuse issues that have hurt them in the past -- like Social Security and education -- while framing the agenda in terms of issues that are their strengths, like tax cuts and shifting power to the states. But seizing control of the agenda, defining their own party's objectives and succeeding at them, will be a herculean task this year and next.

The Republican problem has several components:

1. Republicans vs. Republicans. It may not be quite as bad as it seemed when Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said of his Senate GOP brethren, "It's a good thing they weren't at Valley Forge or the Alamo." But the traditional rivalry between the House and the Senate has a new layer of acrimony added on because of the impeachment debacle. The core GOP political strategy is to pre-empt the president by defining the agenda directly -- passing conservative policies through both houses of Congress, sending the bills to the president and forcing him to veto or sign them. That's a very effective approach -- if you can pass the bills in identical form through both houses of Congress. But even when they had larger majorities and real momentum, like right after the 1994 election, House and Senate Republicans had trouble agreeing on almost anything, whether it be the "Contract with America" or the size of tax cuts. It will be even harder now.

2. Republicans vs. Clinton. Sure, he was vilified by Democrat and Republican alike at the impeachment trial. Sure, one of the House managers said he was "evil and amoral." But no political figure in decades has come near to Clinton's skill, cleverness and adroitness at political maneuvering. Clinton's biggest legacy for his party is that he diffused issues like crime and welfare that bedeviled Democrats for decades and were slam-dunk plusses for Republicans. As Republicans have lost those issues, they have seen Clinton seize on other, more liberal ones and force his adversaries to defend their positions on his terms and his turf.

Consider education. A year ago, Clinton defined education objectives in terms of class size and the proposal for 100,000 new teachers. Yes, that proposal was small-bore and was dumped on by conservatives as more federal government intrusion in a local government area. But it resonated with parents, who know how important class sizes are. By opposing a small and reasonable plan to address the problem, Republicans looked insensitive and petty -- and since their seeming alternative was abolishing the Department of Education, they even appeared anti-education.

This year, Republicans have responded by endorsing more federal funding for education than Clinton has, except with fewer strings to state and local governments. It's awfully hard to portray yourself as the party of smaller government when you call for tens of billions more in federal education spending!

Now consider Social Security and Medicare. The Clinton budget proposes setting aside 62% of future surpluses to save Social Security and an additional 12% to save Medicare. To avoid yet again being on the wrong side of the Social Security debate, Republicans quickly agreed with the president on the 62% figure. That proposal is being criticized by many experts for "double counting" federal revenues, for allocating surpluses that are mere economic projections and for avoiding any of the tough choices that must be made on Social Security. The charges are well taken, but Republicans have disqualified themselves from joining in them because they have endorsed the idea.

At the same time, Republican leaders have said they want to reserve the other 38% of the surpluses for tax cuts. You can see the Democrats trotting out the familiar rhetoric: Republicans would rather give tax cuts to the rich than protect Medicare for the elderly. In other words, Republicans have let the president paint them back into the corner again.

3. Republicans vs. the economy. Americans like having lower tax bills, but they also like having problems solved. They are often skeptical that tax cuts will work for them, rather than for the rich and powerful. They are most interested in lowering taxes when inflation is pushing them into artificially higher brackets, and when a sagging economy leaves them short of cash and wealth. Today, 60% of Americans believe that they are experiencing the best economy in their lifetimes. The rich, especially, are doing well, getting richer through a surging stock market than ever before. This may be the worst time in decades for the GOP to pin its party image on deep tax cuts, especially when they will be counterpoised by Clinton with Medicare and Social Security.

Pre-Clinton, Republicans were riding high, facing a Democratic Party drawn to the left and in disarray. Now, the parties' situations are reversed. Post-impeachment, can Republicans find a coherent agenda and outfox the savvy president? That task may make impeachment and removal look like a piece of cake.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.