Henninger and the WSJ (part 17, at least)

Daniel Henninger, of the WSJ, in a pitch perfect example of Foxification  of news: "In 2008's election, many Republicans and independents voted for Mr. Obama to put a final nail in the coffin of Justice O'Connor's racial anxieties. The millions of them who then cast votes against Mr. Obama in 2012 did so almost wholly because of the status of the economy after four years of his presidency. No matter. They lost in 2012 because they're "too white.""

Did non-Democrats vote for Obama in 2008 merely because he was Black?   It had nothing to do with his opposition, contempt for the GOP, Obama's promise and vision, and a willingness to believe that politics (and governing) could once again be sober, rational and bipartisan?

Did anti-Obama voters pick Romney because they trusted his vision of economics (which was what?) more than Obama, and not because Obama was Black?

Henninger wants to have it both ways.  Obama won in 2008 because he was Black, but being Black had nothing to do with votes against him in 2012.  People who voted for him in 2008 were irrational; people who voted against him in 2012 were rational.

He also claims that, "When George W. Bush attracted 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004, there was no cry that the Republican Party was "too white." The GOP's problem with Hispanics today is a tangle of issues involving the law, labor and assimilation that is hardly reducible to the accusation that the party is too white."

Except that being 'White' correlates highly with feeling threatened by the Brown-ing of America.  Hispanics voted for Bush 2 because of his immigration policies; Hispanics voted against Romney because, also, of his immigration policies.  True, but Romney's policies were driven by the fearful politics of White privilege and xenophobia, inflamed by red state news' (et. al.) reporting that the "Browns" are stealing jobs of "Whites," flooding the public services and thus raising the taxes of "Whites" and the leading cause of crime and violence in otherwise calm and peaceful "White" society.

Henninger and friends are free to believe what they want and to pitch false consciousness onto their readership.  That does not mean its readership needs to trust them.