Every time we take off, the option we want is a safe and uneventful landing at our destination. But when several factors go seriously wrong during a flight, a situation can arise in which that first and most desirable option is no longer available to us. Sometimes you have to land at an emergency alternative airfield. Sometimes, although this has never happened to my friend and me, you come to the realization that the situation has deteriorated beyond that point, that you’re going to be on the ground soon, and it won’t be at an airfield.

It was regarding that sort of situation that my aviator friend stressed that you still have options, and you should choose the one that maximizes your chances of survival. You may have to accept the fact that there may be considerable damage, perhaps injury, and risk of worse, in order to avoid the kind of crash that no one has any chance of walking away from or even being carried away from in one piece. Inexperienced pilots, he said, sometimes suffered such catastrophic crashes because until the bitter end they refused to accept the fact that the ideal option had passed out of reach. Hauling back on the control yoke in a panicked bid to defy the laws of physics, they would stall and drop into an unrecoverable spin, bound to make a smoking hole in the ground.

This is a good analogy for the present political situation of the Republican Party. When the 2016 campaign season began, rank-and-file Republican activists hoped to elect a solidly conservative Republican president who, together with the Republican majorities in the House and Senate would roll back the damage done by the Obama administration and the rogue Supreme Court.

That ideal option passed out of reach when in July of last year the powers that controlled the Republican National Convention broke the rules to deny a roll-call vote and prevent any chance of the delegates being freed to nominate any candidate but Donald Trump. Since that time there has been no real chance of accomplishing more than a pittance of the good results for which Republicans have hoped. Trump is too ignorant, too lazy, too undisciplined, too dishonest, too selfish, too unconcerned with any cause beyond the feeding of his own ego to accomplish even a modicum of the conservative agenda.

On the other hand, every day the Republicans have spent embracing Trump has seen that much more of his moral filth rub off on them. The longer they cling to him, the worse it will get. The moral high ground has been lost. Millennials are disgusted. The world is laughing at us. Indications are that Republicans are going to take a pounding in the 2018 election.

So what is the best option available for Republicans to survive this situation?

Impeach Trump now.

“But,” I seem to hear someone asking, “what did he do?” Did you read Comey’s testimony? He pressured Comey to drop the Flynn investigation and effectively foreclose any likely chance of investigating Trump himself (by publicly announcing that Trump was not under investigation). When Comey didn’t do it, Trump fired him. That’s obstruction of justice. More is sure to come out later, but that will do for now. Trump can and should–justly and rightly–be impeached and removed from office.

“But isn’t that based only on Comey’s word?” Seriously, in a he-said/he-said between Trump and Comey–between Trump and anyone–are you really going to believe that habitual liar Trump? He has no credibility at all. Besides, Trump’s firing of Comey was a public act, and the fact that he did so on his own judgement, not the recommendation of others, was something he tweeted.

“But doesn’t Trump have the power to fire the FBI chief?” Yes, and if he uses it to block an investigation, he is abusing that power. Nixon was about to be impeached, with the support of Congressional Republicans, for obstruction of justice in the form of blocking an FBI investigation. Impeachment is the only remedy for a president who uses the massive powers of his office to protect himself and his cronies from the reach of the law.

“But won’t impeaching Trump give power to the Democrats?” No, Mike Pence will be president. I’m not a fan, but Mike Pence is a massive up-grade over Trump. The Democrats certainly won’t appreciate him.

“But won’t impeaching Trump hurt the Republican Party?” The Republican Party is already hurt. It has lost public esteem, and it is going to lose seats in Congress. The longer it defends Trump the worse the damage will be. Getting rid of Trump quickly (rightly and in accord with justice) is the option that maximizes the party’s survival chances.

“But don’t the Democrats want to impeach Trump?” They would certainly be ill-advised to remove him from office quickly. If they’re smart, they’ll want to investigate him, attack him, and hang him like Coleridge’s albatross around the neck of every Republican candidate for office for the next four years. They’ll want this scandal to drag on as long as possible, with Republicans making excuses for Trump’s inexcusable behavior, repeating Trump’s outrageous lies, and rendering themselves all as ridiculous as Sean Spicer has been doing the past four months. The Democrats would be making a big mistake politically if they allowed the Trump scandal to be dispatched quickly. They could get a lot more mileage out of it than that. It’s the Republicans who should want to put this behind them.

But do I believe the Republicans will actually do this? We’ll see. I hope they finally become aware that Trump is a real existential danger to their country, their party, and their own political future. I’m hoping they won’t go down like the political equivalent of inexperienced pilots, teeth clenched, hauling back frantically on the control yoke while the altimeter relentlessly winds down.