The only way Donald Trump can be removed from office is if 20 Republican quislings in the U.S Senate vote to remove him — and if this happens, it would be the end of the Republican Party for decades.

When Bill Clinton was impeached I was in my early thirties and no fan of Bill Clinton. Nevertheless, I did not want him removed from office. While there is no question he committed perjury and obstructed justice, while there is no question he had broken the law, even as a rock-ribbed Republican I was horrified at the idea of overturning an entire presidential election over a guy trying to cover up an embarrassing extra-marital affair.

Clinton was eventually impeached, but he was not removed, and what saved him was not the letter of law. If impeachment were about the letter of the law, Clinton would have been removed. No, what saved him was the infinite wisdom of our Founding Fathers.

You see, impeachment and removal is, thankfully, not a legal process. It is a political process. This means that in order to remove a president, you must have the will of the American people behind you, and it was the will of the American people, including Republicans like myself, who saved Bill Clinton.

As the impeachment process grinded along, Clinton’s job approval ratings jumped into the high fifties and low-sixties. This for a man who only got 49 percent of the popular vote in his 1996 re-election bid. Sure, the economy was humming, but this was a way for people to tell the impeachers Don’t do this!

And they didn’t.

Now, Trump’s job approval rating is never going to hit the high or even mid-fifties. That would require support from large numbers of Democrat voters and Democrat voters despise Trump a whole lot more than Republican voters despised Clinton.

What is happening, though, is that Republican voters are sticking by Trump in huge numbers because we know this is a coup, a hit, an organized conspiracy to use a bullshit whistleblower, media hysteria, and congressional power to jam through impeachment before anyone can come to their senses.

But impeachment is impeachment. It shouldn’t happen, but if it does, the case then goes to the U.S. Senate, where you need 67 votes to remove Trump from office, which means you need 20 Republican votes, which means Republicans risk total annihilation if they dare take Trump out.

At least based on what we know now…

Right now this whole Ukraine thing is nothing more or less than a hoax. Already, we know the so-called whistleblower’s information is not only second and third hand, it is also falling apart once the facts are revealed — kind of like the Russia Dossier Hillary Clinton and the Democrats colluded with foreigners to manufacture.

The whistleblower told us Trump threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine if that country’s president did not agree to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. We were told Biden would be mentioned eight times. We were told there would be a clear quid pro quo.

None of that turned out to be true. Wisely, Trump released the transcript of the call and all we have is Trump asking Ukraine’s president to look into the very real corruption surrounding Biden and his son Hunter.

What’s more, there is nothing close to a quid pro quo.

What’s more, Ukraine would not learn for another month that Trump might hold up aid for reasons that had nothing to do with Biden, so it was impossible for there to be either a quid pro quo or a threat.

There are other things this fake whistleblower got wrong, like who was on the call with Trump at the time and that there was something suspicious about the transcript of the call being put in a secure server. Well, now we know, just as I predicted last week, that — surprise, surprise — Obama used the same secure server.

So, as of now, this is all a hoax… The only thing Trump is guilty of is doing his job as president.

But that doesn’t mean Republicans might not remove him out of spite or cowardice, might not go the full-Mitt Romney.

And if they do… If they remove Trump, take out Our Guy, and the only reason they would is to put the Republican Establishment back in charge, the Party is doomed.

If 20 bitter and jealous Mitt Romneys decide that this is their opportunity to regain control of the Party of Trump, if these backstabbing quisling make a move like that, guys like me will never vote for them again. The Party will become so toxic to Trump supporters, will be exposed as so craven, corrupt, mercenary, and elitist, we are just going to walk away safe in the knowledge that nothing is going to improve until the whole goddamned thing burns to the ground.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.