From the Columbia Daily Tribune:

Orange stickers with an image of rifle cross hairs were found yesterday on the office nameplates of several Democratic state senators, prompting an investigation by Missouri Capitol Police, Senate Administrator Jim Howerton said…

”We don’t have any explanation,” Justus said on the Senate floor. “Many of us when we came back to our office this afternoon had gun targets on our nameplates. A few of the senators removed them, only to have them replaced by larger stickers later.”

Around the anniversary of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, about the time she made the news by officially resigning because of her injuries, someone put rifle-site stickers on the office nameplates of five Democrats and possibly one Republican. Four of those Democrats are women.

Anyone really wondering what the message could possibly be?

This comes on the heels of news about another “message” sent to people involved in Democratic politics. In Arkansas Jacob Burris, campaign manager for Democrat Ken Aden, came home to find the family pet killed and the word “Liberal” written on its carcass.

Aden’s opponent, Steve Womack, denounced the killing in no uncertain terms and Aden has said he doesn’t believe Womack’s campaign is connected to it. I personally would be astounded if we learned otherwise. That’s simply not the kind of thing political campaign operatives do.

That and the gun sight stunt are, however, the kind of things some people will do when they are inflamed by over-the-top rhetoric that paints the political opposition, not merely as the opposition, but as traitors, Communists, America-haters, secret Muslims, etc. Republicans can denounce individual acts like this all they want. When they countenance and even repeat the language that inspires it, those denunciations don’t really amount to much.

No, I don’t think the GOP is actually hoping that another Democrat gets shot. I do think the GOP has decided that the level of physical intimidation their rhetoric inspires can work to their advantage. Consider for a moment that our first African American president is going to be campaigning for re-election for the next few months. Running for president, even as an incumbent, typically involves, going out into public, shaking hands, meeting constituents face to face.

Certainly there’s an element of risk to this for any President, but the current language combining violent imagery, an emphasis on guns, and the repeated iteration of the president as an interloper, someone who is painted as not a real American, not a real Christian, but an outsider out to destroy America, ups the ante significantly.

If President Obama and any other Democratic candidate must now factor in an even higher risk factor than they’ve faced in the past, it can negatively impact their abililty to literally reach out to constituents, meet them one on one. They can end up campaigning, with one hand figuratively tied behind their backs.