RUSH: Once again, Betty Casey is the high bidder: $2,100,100. In addition to thanking Betty Casey, I want to include all of you. There were a number of people who bid, and there were a number of you who couldn’t afford the levels shortly after this auction began, who have made donations of various sizes to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. This has just been an incredible week — and, folks, hear me on this. This whole episode this week has been a great illustration of how America is great. This is the kind of thing that makes this country great. The private sector has a heart; the government does not. Harry Reid may want to now try to claim some credit for this, as he did in an implied way in remarks he made on the Senate floor at noon, but let’s not forget: His was a smear letter, and it was posted on eBay as a smear letter, and it was portrayed by us as a smear letter. All over eBay that word ‘smear’ was there. It was an abuse of power, and that is why it went for $2,100,100. I want you to remember this week, in November of ’08: the private sector, made up of millions of people in this audience demonstrating what real compassion is. If you vote Democrat, you’re voting for another major step towards socialism, of even more government, more government for Harry Reid to use as a blunt instrument against the people who pay his salary.
This episode is a highly visible microcosm of the larger battle that we conservatives fight on a daily basis, and this has truly been a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed excursion into excellence on the part of all of us this week. We ran circles around a liberal regressive, and we did it with half our brains tied behind our backs. We did it ourselves. We didn’t have any push. We didn’t have any assist. Not that we expected it nor wanted it, but the usual media amplification on a story like this never happened. It was nowhere to be found, and yet, look! We broke eBay right before one o’clock Eastern, and we set the record for the highest bid for a charitable item, breaking the record of $800,100 for a Harley-Davidson owned by Jay Leno. So thank you, folks — all of you, including Betty Casey — because so many of you got involved here. I don’t know what the record for views on eBay is, but this was well over a million, and that’s like individuals. The number of hits has to be a multiple of that with people hitting it often and again trying to get updates to the latest bid.