So apparently our Oregon Secretary of State, Republican Dennis Richardson, asked that he be provided with a security detail, unlike all other Oregon secretaries of state before him. Richardson’s staff claimed that the secretary of state faced security threats due to “heightened partisan tensions across the country,” in the wording of The Oregonian, though they could not point to any specific threats. If this sort of outside-the-box request by a Republican politician rings a bell, it’s because EPA head Scott Pruitt has at the federal level earned headlines due to the millions of dollars he’s blown through on his own unprecedentedly elaborate security protection.

So is this a thing now, Republican politicians claiming they need security to be protected from non-existent threats? Apart from the authoritarian connotations of even lesser-known bureaucrats requiring their own personal firepower, it’s worth noting the way such actions bizarrely slur Democrats as threatening physical harm against them. After all, only one of America’s two major parties is headed by a president who has regularly prescribed violence as a suitable prescription for immigrants, reporters, families of terrorists, and other apparent enemies of the state. Only one party has a president who found himself unable to call out Nazi thugs who killed a woman in Charlottesville. Only one party seems untroubled by the mainstreaming of physical threats into our political discourse.

Here in Oregon, Richardson has withdrawn his request for security (and a driver), citing his concern that future holders of his office might abuse these services — a consideration that was obviously true at the time he initially made these requests. I am left to conclude that he’s changed his mind due to the shitty reception his proposal received, though one suspects he considers himself ahead of the game among right-wing voters by having managed to suggest that the left in America has turned violent toward politicians it opposes. Heck of a way to build that base, Dennis.