Since November 9, the I-word has been heard frequently around Democratic dinner tables. But in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, it was scarcely heard. But that’s all changed. “The only thing I can say is I think we’ve seen this movie before,” Senator John McCain said Tuesday night, even before news broke that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed a special prosecutor, former F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, to lead the Justice Department probe into the Trump campaign’s Kremlin ties. “I think it’s reaching the point where it’s of Watergate size and scale.” Now, in a moment reminiscent of Trump’s Access Hollywood hot-mic imbroglio, people have begun to seriously entertain the possibility of impeachment. Which immediately raises the prospect of President Mike Pence.

On the campaign trail, Pence was the perfect counterweight to Trump: even-keeled where his boss is erratic, and a known quantity on Capitol Hill. Republican Party donors, rattled by Trump’s ascendance, could take comfort in a man with all the right conservative credentials. And since the inauguration, the vice president has continued to be seen as a stabilizing force within a chaotic administration, playing his part seamlessly. “He is an ideologic rock, and I think he has continued to be that in every way,” Rex Elsass, a top G.O.P. strategist and ad maker who worked with Pence on his congressional and gubernatorial campaigns, told me. “He’s done his job and been loyal to the president and is able to be someone who is seen as the ideologic heart of the administration.”

Thus far, Pence has been hardly singed by the Trump conflagration. Republican strategist Rick Wilson suggested that Republican lawmakers, particularly in the House, have sought to shield Pence from the scandal emanating from the West Wing. “I think some of them are doing some scenario planning, some of them just want somebody that they know speaks their language, and some of them want somebody that understands the tribal culture of the Hill, which he does. He certainly is a creature of that world,” Wilson told me. “So a lot of them are protecting him and keeping him sort of a little bit above the fray because they would like to have a backup plan just in case.”

“The guy is capable of putting together a kind of long-term game plan.”

Impeachment may yet be a liberal pipe dream—to say nothing of a 25th Amendment coup—but conservative pundits have begun floating the possibility of President Pence. “Republicans who are reflexively defending the self-inflicted wounds of this president have no need for him with Mike Pence in the wings,” Erick Erickson wrote on Wednesday. As Ross Douthat noted in his most recent column, the political cost to Republicans would come in primary challenges, not policy setbacks. “Hillary Clinton will not be retroactively elected if Trump is removed, nor will Neil Gorsuch be unseated.”

Whether Pence’s reputation will actually survive Trump remains to be seen. “I think, to some degree, no matter how hard he tries to stay above the fray, he is going to be forever linked to Donald Trump,” a G.O.P. strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. He added that Pence, who along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions was reportedly in the room with Trump and Comey before the president allegedly asked the F.B.I. director to close the Flynn investigation, will likely have some questions of his own to answer. “I think at the end of the day, Mike Pence is in a really hard spot and doesn’t necessarily have the best hand to play.” If he runs in 2020, “I don’t think Pence would get a free pass by other potential Republican candidates.”