According to a new Rasmussen poll released Friday, 74 percent of likely Republican voters think Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2016.

That prospect makes former speechwriter for George W. Bush and professional Donald Trump detractor Michael Gerson very unhappy. And now he is warning the GOP that the Establishment may pick up their marbles and go elsewhere — to a third-party run.

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“Many Republicans could not vote for Trump but would have a horribly difficult time voting for Clinton,” he writes in the Washington Post. “The humane values of Republicanism would need to find a temporary home, which would necessitate the creation of a third party.”

Coming from a close ally of the Bush family, his declaration may not be an empty threat. As Gerson acknowledges, “This might help elect Clinton, but it would preserve something of conservatism, held in trust, in the hope of better days.”

In a telling sign of the seriousness of Gerson’s proposition, Jeb Bush refused to say during an appearance on the Hugh Hewitt show whether he would support Trump as the nominee.

It seems for the Establishment GOP, loyalty only runs in one direction. Candidates and politicians apparently need not demonstrate loyalty to the voters who elected them. They likewise have no obligation to do what they promised to rein in spending, defund Planned Parenthood, stop executive amnesty, and so on. In fact, under Gerson’s analysis, they should be rewarded when they defy the majority of voters in their own party on seminal issues such as immigration and trade.

It’s an odd thing when the actual voters who make up the Republican Party — more than 60 percent as of now support an “outsider” candidate — are demanding real change, yet key figures in the Establishment still refuse to acknowledge their mistakes. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had the better response at St. Anselm’s college recently when he said, “You, the people, have a right to be angry,” citing their justified discontent with GOP leadership on the economy and stopping the Obama agenda.

At least Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus believes that loyalty is a two-way street, reiterating that his committee would get behind whomever is the nominee. As for the idea that a Trump nomination would hand Hillary a certain victory, he disagrees.

“There is huge crossover appeal … [he] taps into the culture,” he told the Post.

If I could ask Gerson anything, I’d ask him whether the George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton ad in 1988, or the attacks on John McCain in 2000, or the attacks on gay marriage in 2004, represent the “humane values of Republicanism.”