U.S. Rep. John Linder is among those who are making the early prediction that Republicans will win back their majority in the House of Representatives because of voter opposition to the healthcare reform plan being pushed by President Barack Obama and the Democrats.
The dentist-turned-congressman was quoted by Blake Aued of the Athens Banner-Herald:
“This feels very much (the same),” said U.S. Rep. John Linder, R-Duluth, who was first elected in 1992. “We’re seeing that happen again.”
Next year, conservative Blue Dog Democrats like U.S. Rep. John Barrow, a former Athens-Clarke commissioner who now lives in Savannah, “could pay a price, like Don Johnson did,” UGA political science professor Charles Bullock said.
Linder predicted that Blue Dogs from conservative districts will listen to their constituents and bail out on health care reform. And they’ll lose anyway, he said.
“I think it’s getting more and more likely that (the GOP will take over) next time,” he said.
That’s a staggering prediction from the Gwinnett County solon, but who knows? He may well be proved right when we finally uncork the bottle of politics in the 2010 election campaign.
I will say this about Linder: he is without doubt the most boring public speaker I’ve ever encountered during my years of writing about politics but he still manages to be quite entertaining in his own bumbling way.
Every time I’ve covered one of Linder’s press conference or live speeches, I’ve had to struggle to stay awake as he drones on and on and on about the problems of our time, all of which could be magically solved if we’d only enact the Fair Tax. I’ve often wondered how he and talk show host Neal Boortz were ever able to co-author their book on that said tax — Boortz surely must have fallen asleep whenever Linder started dictating his part of the chapter.
But give Linder credit for this: he knows how to party.
One of the funniest articles ever published by the Washington Post was Mary Ann Akers’ 2008 account of Linder’s happy hour incident at a Capitol Hill bar called Bullfeathers. Here’s how Akers, the wife of investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, described it:
It wasn’t his most graceful exit, we’ll put it that way. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) was carried out of Bullfeathers, a Capitol Hill bar and restaurant, Thursday evening, feet dragging on the pavement, as congressional aides enjoying happy hour looked on in amazement.
Two Capitol Hill Police cars and a fire truck were called to the scene.
“They had to hold him up by the seat of his pants and his arms were draped around their shoulders,” says one source, a congressional aide, who asked not to be identified.
Another Sleuth informant who was sitting at the bar says the bartender told him “some older guy fainted from the heat or something.”
Linder’s spokesman, Derick Corbett, says the 65-year-old congressman didn’t faint but he did fall and hurt his knee pretty badly. Linder is scheduled to undergo an MRI medical test on Monday.
“John has a bad knee,” Corbett tells us. “He put his foot down the wrong way, and his knee gave out.” Corbett wasn’t there but he says the congressman told him, “It hurt, and it hurt bad.”
Yes, you have to be very careful with those “bad knees.” While they can be quite beneficial to a person — after all, a “bum knee” kept Saxby Chambliss out of the military during the Vietnam war — they can also cause you to pass out at the most inconvenient times, such as happy hour at the local saloon.
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