DENVER — Republicans came into this presidential campaign with painful memories of how, in the last one, Democrats blasted Mitt Romney’s tax plan as a giveaway to the rich. They’ve heard a new wing of conservative intellectuals urge them to focus on tax cuts to working-class Americans rather than the wealthy.

Yet the release of Donald Trump’s tax plan adds to the number of major GOP presidential candidates who propose to cut all taxes — but especially those for the wealthy — as deeply, or deeper, than Romney proposed. The lesson Republicans seem to have drawn is to simply stop worrying about balancing the budget. The plans would blow open deficits over the next decade that economists estimate ranging from $3.6 trillion to $12 trillion.

Oren Cass, who was Romney’s domestic policy adviser, noted the former Massachusetts governor had pledged to make his tax cuts deficit-neutral by cutting tax loopholes, though he never fully detailed how his plan would do so. Yet he was still savaged by Democrats who accused him of planning to stiff middle-class ratepayers for the benefit of the rich.

“You look at what Gov. Romney did and you say, ‘There’s nothing to be gained from being responsible that way,’ “ Cass said. “You may as well do the plan that your base is going to love.”

Trump initially hinted he might buck conservative economic orthodoxy and raise taxes on the wealthy. But he ended up releasing the most aggressive tax cut of all candidates to date. The Tax Foundation, which favors lower taxes, estimated that his plan would increase the deficit by $12 trillion. The foundation found more than one-fifth of the plan’s benefit would accrue to the top 1 percent of income earners.