The grim demeanor of Washington has turned even grimmer in the last couple of weeks as questions abound as to whether President Donald Trump withheld money from the Ukraine government in order to obtain a political favor.

Impeachment talk is pretty much all that is coming out of the nation’s capital. Democrats are at a fever pitch when it comes to demanding Trump be removed from office. The president himself has changed descriptive phrases, calling it a “coup” now instead of a “witch hunt,” which was his common refrain during Robert Mueller’s investigation.

The latest Trump scandal involves a phone call to Ukraine’s president and $250 million in military aid from the United States. A whistleblower complaint claims Trump called Volodymyr Zelenskiy in July and solicited help in gathering potentially damaging information about Joe Biden, who is leading the field of Democrats running for president in 2020.

On Sept. 11, the White House informed government officials it was releasing the $250 million to Ukraine after reviewing the best way to utilize the funding. The connection between the two events indicates the money was promised in exchange for dirt on Biden, say Trump’s foes.

From all the chatter in Washington, it seems more likely than not that a vote to impeach will be inevitable.

However, I think the bigger question is, if the House of Representatives does vote to impeach the president, will there be enough senators willing to convict him? There’s a Democratic majority in the House, so an impeachment vote is likely. But Republicans still control the Senate, and if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stays true to form, getting his group to proceed with a trial and possible conviction seems like a harder sell.

First of all, let’s look back at attempts to impeach U.S. presidents. So far, no impeachment attempts against the leader of the free world have succeeded. Three have been made out of the 45 presidents who have been elected.

When it came to Bill Clinton, the Senate could only get 45 senators to convict on the perjury charge, and only 50 voted to convict for obstruction. The senators couldn’t even get a majority vote, much less the two-thirds supermajority required to convict the president.

The only other impeachment that went to trial was Andrew Johnson in 1868. There were 11 charges against Johnson, but only three went to a vote. When the Senate could not reach that supermajority, the trial was adjourned, and Johnson stayed in power.

Of course, everybody knows about Richard Nixon’s impeachment in the 1970s, but he resigned rather than go through a trial. I highly doubt that Trump will do the same.

Only 20 government officers faced impeachment proceedings, and of those, only eight were convicted and removed from office. All of those were federal judges. To succeed in ousting a sitting U.S. president would be an interesting day in history. It’s also a tremendous undertaking that not only requires all the ducks to be in a row, but also tagged, bagged and free of any blemishes.

To convict in this case will also require Republicans to shift their allegiance from the Grand Old Party to looking with an impartial eye. Right now, Democrats hold 45 seats in the Senate, so to reach a two-thirds supermajority will require getting both Independents to come aboard, as well as a minimum of 18 Republicans to stop looking at Trump as their patron saint and take him out to the woodshed.

Can that happen? It seems like an uphill climb when we look at how many times Republicans en masse have shrugged off Trump’s previous statements, actions and shenanigans over the last few years, claiming it’s nothing to lose our heads over. Occasionally, a couple of Republicans have gone against the grain, but impeaching Trump will require more than the token freethinkers finding him guilty.

The thing to remember with impeachment trials is that they’re not like standard criminal trials. We’re not dealing with 12 jurors who have little to no knowledge of what happened. We’re dealing with 100 senators with most having an opinion about Trump and what he’s done. The term “fair and impartial” will go right out the window if the House impeaches Trump.

To get a conviction, there will need to be more than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. There will need to be evidence so damning that anyone who would still think of Trump as a good and decent man would be laughed right out of office. Considering the political climate of today, I have my doubts as to whether there are enough Republicans who will step out of line and vote to convict the man they helped elect.

When it comes right down to it, impeachment will not simply be an indictment of Trump; it will be the blowing of the horn that signals the start of a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Can that soul be saved? I doubt even the highest clergy knows the answer to that question.