IN WASHINGTON
NOW that US President Barack Obama has laid out his ambitious agenda with a US$787 billion economic stimulus package and a US$3.6 trillion budget, all eyes are on how the opposition Republicans would fight back.
Who will lead them in the political battles ahead? The past weekend threw up some interesting possibilities.
On the cover of the New York Times magazine on Sunday was former House speaker Newt Gingrich with a provocative headline: "The Anti-Obama?"
Credited for leading the "Republican Revolution" in the mid 1990s that ended four decades of Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, Mr Gingrich is looked upon once again by many in the opposition party as a leadership figure who can rally the troops against the popular Mr Obama and his fellow Democrats.
The cover story described the resurgent Mr Gingrich as being at the "zenith of influence in conservative Washington". He is also a "total idea factory", someone who would send suggestions on politics, policy, and strategy at the rate of about 10 an hour.
And ideas are exactly what the Republicans need right now, the magazine suggested, adding: "Gingrich thinks about ideas strategically, as a way of countering his opponents or wooing new constituencies, and this is something Republicans have failed to do almost from the day he left Capitol Hill."
But will ideas return the Republicans to power?
Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, another stalwart of the conservative movement in the US, does not think so.
Attracting just as much media attention over the weekend as the keynote speaker for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC, Mr Limbaugh told a 8,000-strong crowd that what the party needed to do was to return to its conservative roots of small government and fiscal discipline, not dream up policy alternatives.
"Everyone asks me 'what can we do', 'how can we overcome this'," said Mr Limbaugh. "Well, the one thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now. It's philosophy folks."
This yin-yang, mind-versus-heart contrast in approaches championed by Mr Gingrich and Mr Limbaugh are fitting examples of the turmoil in the Republicans party as it searches not just for a way to beat the Democrats, but also for answers to fractious internal debates.
Can there be a middle way?
Perhaps the third likely leadership figure in the Republicans party – former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney – might provide an answer.
A straw poll of 1,757 people who attended CPAC identified Mr Romney as the person they would most likely vote for as the Republican nominee for the Presidential race in 2012. He ran for last year's presidential campaign, but dropped out of the race eventually to endorse Senator John McCain’s bid instead.
But Mr Romney has not been in the media limelight as prominently as Mr Gingrich or Mr Limbaugh, and said recently that it was unlikely that he would run for President in 2012.
So who will rally the Republicans in the months and years ahead? For now, the search goes on.