Johnnie B. Byrd Jr., speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, has revealed himself to be the worst incarnation of a politician -- a demagogue. He did that at Plant City the other day with an expensively staged accusation that the Florida Senate is scheming to raise taxes by $11.5-billion. No such conspiracy exists, and Byrd would have to be clinically delusional to believe seriously that it does.

Yes, the Florida Senate is looking at taxes. Yes, there is a list. But not a secret list, as Byrd had wantonly charged a week earlier. It was circulated at a public meeting of the Finance and Tax Committee under the heading, "Examples of Revenue Options." Most of the items have appeared in legislative reports year after year. The most expensive options in each category happen to total $11.5-billion, but only a fool would imagine anything like that actually coming to pass.

Byrd, however, plans to play the people of Florida for fools. It's a familiar tactic: Set up a straw bogeyman, demolish it, and claim the laurels of a hero. In the short range, Byrd aims to make it impossible for the Senate to raise revenue by even a modest amount, no matter what hardships ensue from the meager, cold-hearted budget the governor proposes. Beyond that, Byrd is running flat-out for some higher office, most likely the U.S. Senate. And he's doing it at public expense, without the slightest hint of embarrassment or shame.

Where the last speaker had one state-salaried media aide, Byrd has seven. Three of them went to Plant City to stage-manage Byrd's event. When Byrd made essentially the same accusation at Tallahassee to a roomful of capital journalists and home-town editors on Jan. 21, reporters who know the Legislature easily determined that it was hogwash and few if any wrote about it.

So Byrd journeyed to Plant City -- like President Bush to his hometown of Crawford, Texas -- where he figured to make a splash the media couldn't ignore. The only new element was the appointment of a kangaroo court committee to collect testimony statewide against the phantom Senate plan. A stacked committee, with stacked witnesses, is the technique the House employed last year to disparage outgoing Senate President John McKay's tax reform effort. Byrd himself chaired that committee.

It does not stretch comparison too far to liken Byrd's conduct to that of the late, infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. Where McCarthy was demonizing alleged Communists and those he accused of supporting them, Byrd is demonizing taxes and those he accuses of supporting them. The issues differ, but the technique is the same, down to playing the media like a trumpet.

This also has the potential of making heroes of his opponents. Jim King, a decent, moderate legislator who has become Senate president at perhaps the worst of times, is already cast in that role.

Somewhere in the House, one would like to think, are members of Byrd's own Republican Party who will call him to account as Margaret Chase Smith of Maine and George Aiken of Vermont did to McCarthy a half-century ago. In this instance, the House Republicans, having elected Byrd to be their speaker, are responsible for his demagoguery.

And they will bear the blame if Byrd makes it impossible for the Legislature to consider even modest tax increases to offset some of the intolerable contingencies in the governor's budget. Lawmakers need to debate seriously and soberly whether it would be better to cut university budgets by more than $100-million or call off the next reduction in the intangibles tax, whether Florida should destroy a program that helps keep teenage girls from becoming criminals or raise its tax on cigarettes, whether it should raid trust funds pledged to protecting the environment and building affordable housing or plug loopholes that are fast making a nullity of the corporate profits tax, whether it should turn people out to die or find money somewhere to preserve assistance for the medically indigent. There is a long list of hard choices.

This is the first budget crisis since the Republicans took over Tallahassee. It is to the immense credit of King and his supporters that they are going about their jobs in the spirit that good citizens expect of them.

But the Senate is one of only two houses. If Byrd persists in manipulating his speakership to launch a hard-right candidacy for some higher office, nothing but disaster can come of the 2003 session. And nothing but shame, eternal shame, can befall the party in power.

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