“You are a traitor…” began one of these House GOP texts earlier this week. “You abandoned Trump.”

The text gave a false deadline of 17 minutes to donate. “This is your last chance to prove your loyalty or to be called a deserter,” we read.

The House GOP committee, which declined to comment on its tactics, said it raised nearly 44% of its funds in the last quarter online.

“Democrats have owned fundraisers online, and that’s no longer true,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, who previously led the House’s Republican campaign arm. “Republicans are now the ones who are obsessed and excited. People voted for Biden to get Trump out of their living room. But they did not vote for all of its policies.

Most Republican strategists hope to stay focused on Democrats, knowing that voters generally want to control those in power. But Mr. Trump’s continued insistence on making false claims that the 2020 election was stolen a central rallying cry for the GOP – “If we don’t solve the 2020 presidential voter fraud,” Mr. Trump in a statement this week, “Republicans will not vote in ’22 or ’24” – is a complicating factor.

“If this is a referendum on Biden’s policies, we’ll do just fine,” Graham said of the 2022 mandates. “If it’s in hindsight, if it s This is a grievance campaign, so we could be in trouble.

Mr. Emmer tried to distance himself from Mr. Trump’s remarks by saying, “He’s a private citizen, and of course he’s entitled to his own opinion.” Still, Emmer added that he was “honored” that the former president was headlining the committee’s fall fundraising dinner. “It remains our party’s biggest draw,” he said.

The leaders of Congress are the party’s other main fundraisers. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the leader of the Republican minority, and his senior deputy, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, transferred a combined total of nearly $ 30 million to their party committees this year, officials said. party.