If the Journal really wants to understand the rise of Trump, they’d do well to look closer to home. For years, congressional Republicans, Ryan foremost among them, have championed a Wall Street Journal–approved policy agenda that grass-roots Republicans have found doesn’t address their concerns. The RAND Presidential Election Panel Survey found that 51 percent of GOP primary voters favored increasing taxes on households earning over $200,000 a year. While this is hardly an overwhelming majority, it’s striking that hardly any Republican candidates bothered trying to appeal to this rather large GOP constituency. The Wall Street Journal has long called on Republicans to oppose tax increases on affluent voters. Indeed, for decades, the Journal has insisted the GOP make tax cuts for high earners a centerpiece of its economic agenda, despite the fact that support for this position is neither broad nor deep.

Leaving aside the merits of the case for tax cuts, the federal income tax is now far more progressive than it was when Ronald Reagan first came to office. Relatively few voters, including relatively few Republican voters, consider tax cuts a particularly high policy priority, as Megan McArdle of Bloomberg View observed back in January. “There is simply no way to make federal tax cuts add up to a winning strategy in this day and age,” she wrote. “It’s great for the donor base and the think tanks. But it’s going to fall on deaf ears among the voters, who just don’t care that much.”

The political advice the Wall Street Journal is giving Paul Ryan and his Republican allies is transparently absurd. Nevertheless, one can’t help but sympathize with the Journal. In the Journal’s ideal world, the GOP would largely abandon social conservatism and instead offer tax cuts for the rich, open borders, and deep cuts in programs like Social Security and Medicare.