Missouri Republicans line up behind Trump on impeachment, raise campaign cash

As conservatives across the country rally to defend President Trump from impeachment, Missouri Republicans are doing their part — and looking to raise some money while they’re at it.

Missouri Republican Party Executive Director Jean Evans began an email to supporters Friday with a blanket denouncement of the week’s hearings, which saw American diplomats repeat and expand on testimony outlining how Trump pressed Ukraine's president to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, while withholding nearly $400 million in military aid.

“The democrats' circus-like impeachment hearings that have been going on this week have given the American people no reason to believe that the President should be impeached,” she wrote. “Our federal delegation all stand against this sham impeachment process and we stand with them!"

Then she made her pitch: “Click here join us and stand with them as well!”

For those not sold yet, the email included a quote from every Missouri Republican in Congress, featuring criticism of Democrats’ efforts on multiple fronts.

Some quotes, like one from Sen. Josh Hawley, who has also raised money on the issue, cast the impeachment process as illegitimate on its face.

"What they're doing is a political circus, it's one big stunt,” Hawley told a St. Louis TV station.

Others, like Sen. Roy Blunt and Reps. Jason Smith and Blaine Luetkemeyer, are quoted criticizing Democrats over the rules they put in place to govern proceedings, saying they denied Trump and Republicans due process.

The rules at issue are largely modeled on those used in previous impeachments, but Republicans have complained that Trump’s attorneys will only be allowed to participate once the process moves to the Judiciary Committee and that Democratic committee chairmen can veto Republicans’ witnesses.

“This process that they approved is nothing more than verifying the process that they’ve done so far, which is to prohibit the president from being able to defend himself and have access to due process,” Luetkemeyer told Missourinet after the rules were approved last month.

Still others are quoted as saying Trump did nothing meriting impeachment.

Rep. Ann Wagner, who represents the St. Louis suburbs, told a St. Louis radio station on Oct. 30, after multiple witnesses had already testified about the Ukraine situation behind closed doors, that she hadn’t “seen or heard an impeachable offense by President Trump.”

Then came another request for the apt amount of $20.20 “to help MO Republicans fight back against the impeachment process!”

In an interview Monday, Evans said the appeal is working.

“It’s expanded our reach to small donors,” she said. “We’ve had a great response.”

She said the money raised would go to re-election efforts for Missouri Republicans as well as the party’s overall efforts to spread its message across the state.

Missouri Republicans are far from the first conservatives to try and capitalize on donors’ reactions to the polarizing impeachment inquiry.

Within hours of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announcing that House Democrats would proceed with an impeachment inquiry in September, Trump’s campaign was asking people to donate to an "Official Impeachment Defense Task Force.”

Trump’s campaign manager said the campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $5 million in the first 24 hours.

The RNC made a similar appeal on Twitter last week as impeachment hearings went public.

“These Impeachment Hearings are a total SCAM!” the tweet read. “The President is calling on YOU to crush our goal of $3 MILLION in 24 hours. ALL DONATIONS WILL BE DOUBLE-MATCHED!”

Other prominent national groups, like the Club for Growth and the Tea Party Patriots, are also raising and spending money to defend the president.

National Democrats aren’t sitting this one out, either.

Biden’s campaign sent out his own solicitation after the impeachment inquiry was launched and U.S. House Democrats have orchestrated their own blitz.

Last month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reported it had raised $28.7 million in the third quarter of 2019, a record amount for a third quarter in a non-election year.

Nearly half of that came in September, when revelations about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine first hit fever pitch.

Dan Ponder, a political science professor at Drury University in Springfield, wasn't surprised by any of it.

"This is modern-day politics," he said. "Before everything became so polarized, parties and candidates would raise money off of the issues they wanted to pursue and enact. But now, it appears, you can do the same thing with a message of 'Look what the other side did, send us money so we can fight them.'"