Obama did nothing to deserve Nobel Peace Prize? Hugo Chávez and Mike Huckabee agree!

It takes a lot to get Venezuela's leftist firebrand Hugo Chávez and conservative former presidential contender Mike Huckabee to agree on something.

Sure, they have a couple things in common: one line zingers, a taste for schmaltz, perhaps. But that's about it.

Politically they'd never agree on anything, right? Just a few weeks ago, in an opinion piece entitled "Time to say goodbye to the United Nations," Mr. Huckabee lumped Mr. Chávez in with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi as "murdering thugs and despicable despots."

But when it comes President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the two politicians are marching in lockstep.

"What has Obama done to deserve this prize?" asked Chavez in a column. "The jury put store on his hope for a nuclear arms-free world, forgetting his role in perpetuating his battalions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his decision to install new military bases in Colombia. For the first time, we are witnessing an award with the nominee having done nothing to deserve it: rewarding someone for a wish that is very far from becoming reality."

Tilting at windmills?

Tough words from someone who seems at times to be a tad confused about ideals becoming reality. As the Monitor reported back in 2005, Chávez launched an initiative to print and distribute 1 million copies of Miguel de Cervantes’s 1605 classic, Don Quixote – perhaps in the hope that people may compare him to the fictional defender of the oppressed.

“We are all going to read ‘Quixote’ to feed ourselves once again with that spirit of a fighter who came to undo injustice and fix the world,” Chávez said at the time, tilting at a few windmills of his own, and seemingly missing the irony that Don Quixote never actually accomplished his goals.

Huckabees goes sarcastic

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