is well-known as the voice of the financial establishment.
I wouldn't even say that the WSJ is specifically the voice of the "financial elite" but I think it has been for a while the "respectable" organ of the republican media empire. When the Hunter Biden laptop story 'broke', the first place the Republicans attempted to run it was in the WSJ, as they do with their other most important stories, letters, and opinions.
I think something is changing at the WSJ, and Alito pre-buttal is just the most public sign that the paper is beginning to drop pretenses and give into being a more active and explicitly partisan paper, probably because the legitimacy of other conservative news outfits has been bled dry, and going into the election, the party is more willing to sacrifice more sacred cows to shore up weaknesses.