The peasants have tasted the milk and honey

The Trump disease, as the elites regard it, is infectious and is likely to start an epidemic. A young and successful Minnesota businessman is challenging even House Speaker Paul Ryan, the pet rock of the establishment. Just out of the gate, Paul F. Nehlan III — with all those Roman numerals on his name he sounds like he might be the chairman of the house committee at the country club — talks like a thinking man’s Donald Trump.

He mocks Speaker Ryan’s remarks to a pep rally for House interns the other day in the chamber of the Ways and Means Committee as an example of the washingtonspeak that the speaker and his like-minded colleagues have perfected as the capital’s lingua franca. “Mr. Ryan appealed for unity,” he told the interns, “unity in Congress, unity among the public, unity as a nation. We should test theories and ideas, he asserted, rather than impugning motives. … The system works, he explained, only if we have mutual respect for one another.

“The problem is that the Washington class, of which Paul Ryan has become a top-ranking member, hasn’t had any respect for the rest of us for a very long time. Consequently, yes, we have lost faith in our representatives and in our government.”