Tonight on a pair of party-line votes, the House Democrats dragged 30-something of their freshmen from swing districts where there is a clear voter preference against impeachment over the line to send their pussy-hat idiocy over to the Senate.
House Democrats took the historic step Wednesday of impeaching President Trump, a momentous move that will send long-lasting reverberations throughout the Capitol and the country, both already fiercely divided over the truculent figure in the Oval Office.
The two articles, which charge Trump with abusing power in his dealings with Ukraine and obstructing Congress in their investigation of those actions, passed almost exclusively along party lines, marking the most sectarian and contentious of the three presidential impeachments since the nation’s founding — and the first to target a president in his first term.
Lawmakers voted 230 to 197 on the resolution accusing Trump of abusing his power, with all Republicans opposed and only two Democrats — Reps. Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Jefferson Van Drew (N.J.) — crossing the aisle in dissent. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), a Democratic presidential candidate, voted “present.”
The second article, alleging obstruction, passed along near-identical lines, with lawmakers voting 229-198 approving it and Gabbard voting “present.” Republicans were again unanimous in rejecting the measure, while a third Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), joined Peterson and Van Drew in opposition.
In the Senate it will die, we just don’t quite yet know how Mitch McConnell and the GOP majority will choose to put it down. But tonight impeachment is alive and well, sort of.
We say sort of, because the Democrats weren’t able to move impeachment before Steve Scalise (R-Jefferson), the House minority whip, took a flamethrower to them today and melted down the House of Representatives.
Here’s the video…
Did Scalise fire up the Republicans in the hall, every single one of which voted down both counts of this fake-news impeachment? Of course he did. But as to Republican voters, he didn’t have to do a thing – they were already fired up, and the Republican Party and the Trump campaign are absolutely swimming in money as a result.
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House Democrats are preparing to make President Donald Trump the third president in U.S. history to get impeached, but Republicans and Trump may be the ones who ultimately cash in ahead of the 2020 elections.
The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) deputy chief of staff, Mike Reed, told Axios that “voters are consistently expressing how they want Washington to focus on real issues,” claiming that more than 600,000 new voters have been added since impeachment began.
And in the past week, the Trump campaign and RNC took in a combined $10 million in small-dollar donations as the House Judiciary Committee passed two articles of impeachment, the report said, which added that that in late September, in the three days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the initial impeachment inquiry into Trump, about $15 million was raised.
An official also said that about a quarter of Trump rally registrants have been self-described Democrats or independents since the inquiry started.
Democrats haven’t released specific fundraising totals since the inquiry was launched. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said it doesn’t have dollar or donor figures to share about impeachment, according to the Axios report.
The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website in mid-October noted that the RNC and Trump’s campaign have raised “a record-breaking $334 million to advance GOP campaigns nationwide.” Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has lagged “far behind in its lackluster fundraising efforts, with $8.6 million on hand through the end of September. Falling short in campaign funds, the committee is limited in its ability to help Democratic candidates ahead of 2020.”
History is going to castigate the Democrats for the impeachment mess, and the 2020 elections will be an absolute disaster of historic proportions for them. With the kind of money the RNC and Trump campaign are raising, the third-party expenditures against those 30-something Democrat freshman House members in swing districts will be devastating – and they won’t have the resources to match them.
Nancy Pelosi knows impeachment will cost her the Speaker’s gavel. But she went along with it anyway because she knew the Hard Left who rule her caucus would have taken that gavel now if she hadn’t pushed her chips into the middle on such a bad hand.
They’ll learn. And Scalise will be there saying he’d given them their lesson early.
UPDATE: Here’s just a taste of what’s coming. From a press release tonight…
WASHINGTON – Moments after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, the American Action Network announced it will launch another $2.5 million in television and digital advertising in the districts of 29 Members of Congress who represent districts won by President Trump and who also voted for impeachment. New television ads will run in 9 districts, with digital and social media advertising running across all 29. The ads criticize Members of Congress for voting for impeachment while ignoring issues that matter to the country.
A full list of the districts targeted and a breakdown is available here. The ads will run on cable, broadcast and digital media immediately, reminding folks back home that their Member of Congress ignored the will of their constituents and voted to take away their right to decide elections for themselves.
In the weeks leading up to the House’s vote to impeach Trump, AAN had been leading the charge against impeachment, spending $8.5 million blanketing the airwaves in key districts with broadcast and cable television as well as digital and online media. AAN efforts amounted to more than half of the total outside group spending against impeachment. For details, read the releases from earlier this month here and here.
“Each and every one of these Members will have to explain their vote to impeach President Trump,” said AAN President Dan Conston. “Folks at home expect their Member of Congress to deliver on real issues, instead they’ve spent every waking moment trying to remove Trump from office for their own partisan political ends. They chose to put the far left’s crusade to impeach this President ahead of what’s best for their constituents, and now there’s going to be a reckoning for it back home.”
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