Rep. Jim McCrery’s (R-La.) decision to retire at the end of this Congress means Republican ranks on the House Ways and Means Committee are to be churned yet again.

When McCrery replaced the retiring chairman, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), after McCrery’s only challengers, Reps. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) and Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), were defeated in the midterm elections, it seemed that a period of stability was about to start on the panel’s GOP side.

the midterms turned out to be only the first installment of turmoil. There is going to be as much upheaval on the panel in a year’s time as there was a year ago. In addition to McCrery, Reps. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) and Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) have decided to leave Congress, further depleting the GOP’s upper ranks on the panel.

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) waited 34 years in the House, including 12 in opposition during the Republican ascendancy, before assuming the exalted position of chairman a year ago. He arrived at the head of the panel ready to unburden himself of a mother lode of policies, and these have been deployed in the construction of his “mother of all tax reforms.”

Who will the GOP choose as point man in the fight to stop Democratic tax proposals from becoming law? Who will be the leading Republican on the House tax-writing panel? Reps. Wally Herger (R-Calif.) and Dave Camp (R-Mich.) have already entered the lists to replace McCrery, and there may be other contenders further down the ladder.

But which GOP lawmaker is best suited to going toe to toe with Rangel? Indeed, before answering that question, the party must ask, does it want to replicate (more or less) McCrery’s understated and ameliorative style, or does it want to revert to the out-and-out hostilities of the Thomas era?

Having been out of power for 12 years, Democrats want to govern aggressively and they are willing to legislate for radical change, even if, as in the case of withdrawal deadlines for Iraq, they do not always manage to turn their bills into law.

This Democratic energy for change is a challenge to Republicans. It will be an even more obvious challenge to the GOP’s new leader on the Ways and Means Committee, emerging, as he must, from relative obscurity.