BRIEFLY LAST WEEK, House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on the verge of toppling, pushed by a small band of House Republicans and outside allies. Columnist Kate O’Beirne launched the first strike. Writing in National Review after the election, she called on Gingrich, beset by ethics troubles, to abdicate temporarily in favor of the septuagenarian chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde. GOP Rep. Steve Largent and conservative guru Paul Weyrich echoed O’Beirne’s call for Gingrich to bow out, while Rep. Marge Roukema, a New Jersey moderate, announced, “I can think of no one better than Henry Hyde as speaker.” Fellow moderate and Gingrich ally Chris Shays declared he would abstain from voting to make Gingrich speaker in January unless a long-awaited ethics report were released by then, while Rep. Pete King, a Long Island Republican, upped the ante, blasting Gingrich as “damaged goods” and “a handicap to the Republican party.”

Top Republicans tended to disregard these statements as the work of publicity hounds (“As Pete King goes, so does not go the Republican conference,” sniffs his conservative colleague, Mark Souder of Indiana), and it now appears Gingrich will face no challenge when House Republicans nominate their leaders on November 20. But Gingrich, his staff, and his allies were far from indifferent to the numerous brush fires and moved swiftly to stamp them out.