Don’t be lulled to sleep by this budget thing.

Sure, it seems to have degenerated into an exercise in dulling, numbing tedium. But brace yourself. The budget is going to get sorted out. Then the real show starts -- the aftermath.

A political tsunami has the potential to swamp the House of Delegates.

The heart of the matter lies in this old political maxim: If you’ve got the votes, call the roll. If you don’t have them, negotiate.

Of course, the magic number in the House is still 51. And the magic question is: Who can find that number first?

With Republicans holding a nearly 2-1 majority in the House, you would think that’s a rather academic sort of question. But it’s not.

You see, that Republican majority is not so much a monolithic nation-state as it is a lose federation of warring tribes.

Virginia Republicans did well together when facing a common enemy, very well -- governorship and both state houses, both U.S. Senate seats, three-fourths of the U. S. House seats, and a slew of local stuff.

But then they ran out of territory to conquer and the plague of prosperity set in.

What they should have done is beat their swords into plowshares, and take up the arts -- like governing, and such. But what did they do? Like good barbarians, they tribed back up and turned on each other.

Here’s the astonishing thing: some of the dimmer bulbs of that lot are still at it, still issuing threats to their own, still promising primary opposition, and so on, little cognizant of the fact that they’ve already beaten away enough of them -- 17, to be exact -- to turn the political world upside down in Virginia.

Okay, a quick math review here. What’s the magic number? That’s right, 51. What’s 17 Republicans and 35 Democrats? Who gets there first? You broke the code!

Could they force ... say ... a compromise on the budget? Let me think. Mmmm ... yes. They could (and did) force a compromise on the budget.

Okay, now let’s think for a minute in the abstract. Let’s just say that this coalition drifts into conversation about things other than the budget. What would the possibles be then?

Could they force the election of a new speaker? Absolutely. Could they force the appointment of new committee chairmen? Absolutely.

Let’s save some time and space here. Is there anything that they couldn’t do? Is there anything they couldn’t force? No. Nothing. In legislative terms, they could stop the clocks. In legislative terms, they could make water run uphill. In legislative terms, they can do anything -- anything -- they darn well please.

Politically, could they set off the equivalent of a political tsunami? You bet your sweet backside they could.

Will they do it?

I think a lot of that depends on the behavior of some of these dimmer bulbs in the Republican Party who still don’t get it, who still don’t understand that you can’t threaten and badger all of your troops like you can some of them, who still fundamentally don’t understand the implications of that magic number 51.

I am certain of this: the longer people like Kate Obenshain Griffin, the Republican Party chairman, Paul Jost, Peter Ferrara and Grover Norquist and others of their take-no-prisoner-we’ll-get-you-at-the-polls ilk throw the rocks of the Anti-Tax Right at their own folks, the higher the probability of just such a scenario.

If this shrieking, this behavior goes on long enough -- and there is no sign of abatement yet -- then the brash, defiant, Republican battle cry, “No New Taxes!” could be replaced by a louder, more desperate one:

“Tsunami coming!”

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. What I meant to say was: Gee. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. That would just break my heart.

Consider this for your next gift:
A 60,000 word collection of Barnie Day’s commentaries, entitled "A Mule Yule: Hey, Jesus didn’t ride in on an elephant," with an introduction by Jerry Baliles and forewords by Frosty Landon, Larry Sabato, Robert Holsworth,and Bill Wood, is available from the Democratic Party of Virginia. Contact Laura Bland, toll-free, at 1-800-322-1144