Nancy Pelosi's decision to move ahead with impeachment proceedings against President Trump give both parties an opportunity to rally their fundraising bases.


AUSTIN — Even before U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went before the TV cameras Tuesday afternoon to say the Democratic leadership would launch an impeachment inquiry related to President Donald Trump's now-famous phone call with the Ukraine president, the sales pitches began.

And they all pretty much said the same thing: Send me money!

That's actually a pretty loose paraphrase, but one that is dead-on accurate when it comes to the substance. 

"Nancy Pelosi did the unspeakable," wrote U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the one of the first campaign emails associated with Pelosi's announcment. "Partisan disdain, and personal dislike for our president, President Trump, and turned it against our Democracy by starting the impeachment process.

"But now we must respond, which is why I’m asking every steadfast backer of the president to become a Day One Defender in the impeachment fight."

The email from the Republican senior senator from Texas goes on to ask for donations, even as little as one dollar to show support from the president. But the dollars raised are really for Cornyn, who is seeking his fourth term in a state where some signs suggest is moving from bright Republican red to more of a pastel purple in the Democrats' direction.

More: House Democrats will launch an impeachment inquiry. Here's what we know so far

And Cornyn was far from alone in using what likely will end up as a bitter and divisive impeachment battle to seek, to fatten a campaign bank account. Several of the still 20-plus Democrats seeking the presidency emailed appeals for money they said would help the party stand strong in the coming impeachment storm.

So did some of the Democrats seeking the right to go one-on-one with Cornyn next year, as did the head of the Texas Democratic Party.

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an official impeachment inquiry into President Trump," Texas Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in an email of his own. "The American people deserve the truth about our president and his administration."

The price for getting to that truth? Seven bucks. That's all he asked for. No explanation on how Hinojosa arrived at the figure.

Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale was almost giddy over the fundraising opportunities impeachment — and with it the associated threat of being booted from the White House — held for the president heading into election season.

"In the 24 hours since news of Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment announcement, @realDonaldTrump ’s campaign & @GOP  have BLOWN OUT fundraising!" Parscale, who got his political start in San Antonio, said in a tweet boasting a one-day haul of $5 million. "Huge groundswell of support leading to Trump landslide in 2020!"

Under the political maxim of never let a crisis go to waste, there's no real downside for Trump to leverage the coming battle with House Democrats into an opportunity to rake in campaign contributions.

There's no downside for the Democrats, expect perhaps those trying to hold on in districts and states where the president's popularity is solid.

It could be a little dicier for Cornyn, whose political career dates to the 1990s and has never tasted defeat on election night. Several polls show Trump struggling to keep Texas in the Republican column even though no Democrat has claimed its electoral votes since Jimmy Carter in 1976. And many of those same polls show only tepid support for Cornyn.

On "day one," as Cornyn mentioned in his early Pelosi-impeachment emails, it looked like a smart move to rally behind the president. After all, Republicans were pushing the narrative that the speaker had caved to pressure from firebrand partisans on the left to launch impeachment inquiries.

More: Public opinion on Trump impeachment may be shifting as more Ukraine details emerge

But as details of the whistleblower's concerns emerged about Trump's call where he appears to encourage the Ukraine president to dig for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden's son, a counter-narrative suggesting that there is "some there there" took root.

All of this remains fluid and it's early in the process. Republicans control the U.S. Senate, making it a long shot that the chamber would vote against the president if and when the House sends over a bill of impeachment.

More: 'I would like you to do us a favor.' What Trump and Zelensky said in their July 25 phone call

And, Election Day 2020 is just a faint light on the horizon.

But the Democrats in the running for the Senate nomination are already trying to paint Cornyn as a pliant supplicant of the president. If the impeachment process bloodies Trump, even without toppling him, count on the emails Cornyn sent out castigating Pelosi being recirculated around this time next year, or even sooner.

And a Democrat's name will be in the "sender" box.


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