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RUSH: On eBay we're up to $51,100 for the Harry Reid Smear Letter, signed by 40 of his Senate Democrat colleagues. We've had some people asking if the purchaser, whoever wins the high bid, makes the high bid to get the letter, is it tax deductible. Yeah, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation is a 501(c)(3). So it's deductible. The IRS tax number is on their website and we've linked to it at RushLimbaugh.com. And just to remind you, I didn't make a whole big deal about this a lot of times yesterday, but people have been wanting to donate smaller amounts to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation because they can't afford to bid now on the eBay auction, because it's gotten so high. As I said yesterday, we're making a copy of the Dingy Harry letter available to anybody who wants it, just download it. It's available now as a PDF file, a four-page PDF file at RushLimbaugh.com. I don't want you to have to pay for this twice. You've already paid for it once because these people were on duty, it was during work hours when they wrote and signed the letter. I would much rather you download it and distribute this letter to as many homes and people in the country as possible. It is such that if you want to make a small donation, you can do that, but I'm going to treat you like adults, not kids, and if you want to see it, you want to have a copy of it, go ahead. RushLimbaugh.com, four-page PDF file.
 I also got a note here from subscriber at RushLimbaugh.com. "Hey, Rush, excellent auction, however, I believe you really need to sell this more. This is a historic document in that you have 41 US senators who willfully and knowingly lied to slander a US citizen in efforts to discredit and/or impede his free speech rights. That is a direct violation of their sworn oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America. Our Founding Fathers crafted such language to protect citizens from exactly this kind of behavior. Hopefully the highest bidder will get some media time to explain just that. And to think at least one of these oath violators wants to become president." Actually, Obama signed it, Chris Dodd signed it, three of the signatories, the co-conspirators on the Harry Reid letter, want to be president of the United States. I mentioned that when I made this whole announcement last Thursday night in Philadelphia. People were asking me, "How come Hillary Clinton hasn't weighed in on this controversy?" She has. She signed the letter, which was a blatant attempt to try to get me silenced, punished, shut up somehow.
I'm not unaware of the historical nature of the document. The fine line I have is that I don't want to make myself out to be a victim here. We're having fun with this. To sit here and talk about (crying) "Look what they tried to do to me (crying)." This is not the first time, and it won't be the last, and with each succeeding time they try this, more and more people become aware of it. As I've been saying for a couple of days now, I don't think they have really any idea how they appear to ordinary, average Americans. You ordinary average Americans know, of course, who you are. You are observing all this and you are agog and aghast, and they are just simply not aware of how they appear. And, of course, this is one of the characteristics of having hubris, being arrogant and being condescending, you have to lie to yourself about any number of things. Anyway, we're up to $51,100, the auction goes 'til Friday at 1 p.m., and it is totally tax deductible. Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation is a 501(c)(3). |
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BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I mentioned right before the previous hour, a lot of people, you in the audience, are sending letters to these senators that signed the smear letter written by Harry Reid, including, people are sending letters to Harry Reid. The Senate has form letters they're sending back, "Thanks so much for getting a hold of us, we appreciate," blah, blah, blah. But they repeat the smear! They repeat the smear. "Limbaugh went on and on and on besmirching the honor of military people who have served, but disagree with the policy." It is Kafkaesque. I don't expect them to apologize, but I would expect them to just sort of slowly fade away on this, and drop it, and move on to something else. But they are continuing to smear, and these form letters are going out to people who know the truth. It is just mind-boggling here, even though they now know.
See, I think they knew the truth from the get-go. I think this is all a programmed smear designed, as I said to the Fox News Channel guys this morning, this is designed to affect credibility among people who don't listen to the program and to try to shake some of your faith, of those who do listen to the program. But, see, I asked Harry Reid, "Come, be a man, come to my studio, come on my radio program and say this stuff to my face. Call me unpatriotic to my face." Won't do that, none of the libs will come on and debate the issues. All they want to do is debate me and come up with all of this stuff. It's the same, not just with me, but with a lot of other people. They can't flourish in a circumstance where they don't have a monopoly. They can't win in the arena of ideas. Have you noticed, for example, let's look at the Republican presidential primary. Fred Thompson was in New York last night, and he went out and he attacked Rudy Giuliani. Thompson says, "I am the real conservative in this race," and he went on to point out some things that Giuliani has done that are not conservative, like endorsing Mario Cuomo for governor in 1994.
Here's a little passage from what Thompson said last night. He spoke to a conservative club of New York. He said, "Some think the way to beat the Democrats in November is to be more like them. I couldn't disagree more. I believe that conservatives beat liberals only when we challenge their outdated positions, not embrace them. This is not a time for philosophical flexibility. It's a time to stand up for what we believe in. I spent eight years in Washington fighting for smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, and conservative judges. With me, what you see is what you get. I was a proud conservative yesterday. I remain one today. And I will be one tomorrow. Together we can carry the conservative banner all the way to the White House, and I'm asking for your help." That's Fred Thompson here in New York last night. He didn't mention any names, but he's obviously taking shots at Rudy, because what Rudy is doing is running around saying, "You know what? I can win Massachusetts and I can win Pennsylvania, and I might be able to win New York." When conservatives hear this, "If you say you're going to win those states, how you gonna do it, by out-liberaling the Democrat candidate, or by appealing...?" What Rudy says is, "No. No. I have groups of people that I can appeal to because they know who I am," and he thinks he'll run well with blacks, he thinks he'll run well with the Jewish population, Jewish voters. He thinks he'll run well with people that are liberal but are interested in security.
What I would suggest to Rudy is don't say you can win in these states; say you can win the country. Reagan did not say, "I'm gonna go out and win these particular states." He said, "I'm going to be president of the country. The people of the country believe in my policies and principles," and so forth. But anyway, the point I wanted to make about this is (not to get into campaign advice), but the Republicans are having arguments now about who they are, and they're being very honest. "I'm more conservative than he is." "I'm the real conservative." McCain says, (doing McCain impression) "No, I'm the conservative. Shut up!" Then you've got Romney saying, "I'm the conservative." Meanwhile, over on the Democrat side, can you tell me one of them who's running, "I'm the real liberal here?" None of them! None of them. They're all trying to cover it up. They're all trying to mask it. They're not even talking about their ideology or any of that. They're different policy planks, they're just buying votes, and they're appealing to people's emotions.
The point of all this is you have people like Harry Reid and all the Democrats that signed this letter, and the Media Matters people, they will not engage at all on policy or on ideas, because they can't be honest about who they are in those debates. They can't be honest about how much they want to raise your taxes. They can't be honest about how they really want to lose the war in Iraq. They can't be honest with you about how unserious they take the whole war on terror. They can't be honest about this, and so they have to besmirch and criticize, impugn the integrity and the reputation of those that they find to be their opponents or their opposition. That's all this smear letter is, and it's not the first time that they've tried it with me, and it won't be the last, obviously. They're running against me right now because the Republicans haven't chosen a nominee. The reason they're running against me is because I connect with people who think. We engage and we think about issues; we come to conclusions. We're not mind-numbed robots. We cannot, and do not, want to be made victims so that we become wards of the state.
 So that's what this smear is about, and they're continuing the smear in the letters of response they are sending to constituents and citizens who complain about it. It is historic. It is a massive abuse of power. The First Amendment, free speech, says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. They already have with McCain-Feingold. The United States Congress is supposed to protect innocent citizens by protecting and defending the Constitution. These guys are shredding it and trying to get my corporate partner in the syndication side of the program to condemn me, to make me apologize. This is an effort to harm my ability to do business and it's backfired on them big time. We're at fifty-one one, $51,100, on the eBay auction. It will go through Friday at 1 p.m., and it's going to really start percolating here toward the end of the week. You know the big money is holding out so as not to bid this up. But it will get fast and furious. All the money goes to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. I'm going to match whatever the final donation is with a donation of my own, to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation.
I have requested, suggested, that Senator Reid and the other 40 Senators who signed the letter also match to show their support. I don't think that will happen, but it's a nice thing to suggest and to ask. So you can go to the eBay page. We got a link to it, a little widget there, in fact, on our home page at RushLimbaugh.com, which gives you the running total, the number of bids, plus you can go to the eBay page and see the whole thing. It's going to be up and running. We're having tremendous success and lots of fun with it at the same time while enmeshed in what is a historic occurrence. Whoever ends up with this letter is going to have a historic document. As we say in our description on the eBay page, this may be the greatest example in modern history of the United States Senate, or 41 members of it, trying to shut down the free speech of a private citizen who's not running for any office, who's not elected to anything. It's something, folks, I am proud to be at the center of. I truly am. Whoever ends up with this letter is going to have a Smithsonian-style type of document from our government. |
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