Dick Lugar’s Role
October 9th, 2009 at 1:19 pm by Jim Shella under Jim Shella's Political Blog
Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize win is prompting all sorts of commentary about what little he did to deserve it. Maybe the biggest factor to recommend the President is that he is not George W. Bush, as some say. Yet he does have accomplishments. And, his work with Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles is near the top of the list.
When Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn left the Senate, Obama took over his role as Lugar’s teammate in the ongoing effort to keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists. The two traveled to Russia together for that purpose in 2005. That same work won Lugar an earlier nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and therefore is familiar to the Nobel committee. (It was also the subject of campaign ads by Obama last year.)
Lugar may never win the Nobel Prize but you can make the argument that he owns a piece of this one.
Lugar is a Republican. Nobel prize is not awarded to Republicans.
If there were a prize for ignorance, Gordo would be a contender! Gordo should learn some American history: Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican who received the Nobel.
Dick Lugar’s vote FOR the War on Iraq and his role as a toothless watchdog who didn’t bark as Chair of the Foreign Relations Cmte during the Iraq War will preclude him from ever receiving that Peace Prize.