{"id":16261,"date":"2008-07-17T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16226.html"},"modified":"2008-07-17T09:00:44","modified_gmt":"2008-07-17T13:00:44","slug":"obamas-secret-weapon-dick-lugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/obamas-secret-weapon-dick-lugar\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s secret weapon: Dick Lugar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By all appearances, Barack Obama has a genuine friendship with Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, despite the fact that Lugar is a conservative Republican. The two don’t agree on much, but they’ve worked closely on counter-proliferation — a point that Obama emphasized in a new TV ad unveiled on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/p>\n

“The single most important national security threat that we face is nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists,” Obama says in the ad. “What I did was reach out to Senator Dick Lugar, a Republican, to help lock down loose nuclear weapons.” The spot is running in 18 states, including 14 “red” states, one of which is Indiana.<\/p>\n

The next day, the Obama campaign unveiled a similar ad<\/a> noting Obama’s work on the issue, and while it didn’t mention Lugar by name, the ad did show Obama and Lugar side by side in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.<\/p>\n

That Obama would seek to make this connection isn’t especially surprising. Not only is Lugar popular in a state Obama hopes to win, but the political establishment considers Lugar a very respected elder on matters of foreign affairs. If Obama and Lugar have worked together on the single most important national security threat in the world, then it bolsters Obama’s campaign pitch.<\/p>\n

What’s curious, though, is that this is something of a risk. If the Obama campaign goes out of its way to tout Obama’s work with Lugar, and Lugar turns around and praises John McCain — or worse, says he disapproves of Obama’s ads — it could be politically embarrassing.<\/p>\n

But that’s not what’s happened.
\n
\nIn fact, when Lugar had the chance to cut Obama off at the knees, Lugar did the opposite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lugar, who received a heads-up about the ad from Obama’s campaign, told reporters in Washington that he had no objection to the ad and is “pleased we had that opportunity to work together.”<\/p>\n

“I’ve made no attempt to either suggest or censor ads run by Democratic candidates for office,” Lugar said Tuesday. “But I’ll simply say that the ad is accurate and that the transaction with regard to both the trip as well as the legislation we produced was successful.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Granted, that’s not exactly an endorsement, but it certainly reinforces Obama’s message nicely — on the a pressing national security issue, Obama worked across the aisle and made a difference. Don’t believe him? Listen to the conservative red-state Republican who says Obama’s right.<\/p>\n

That’s not a bad message to have right now.<\/p>\n

I should add, by the way, that Charlie Cook suggested the other day that it’s not “outside of the realm of possibility” that Obama would consider Lugar for a running mate. That seems exceedingly unlikely, but in case there was any doubt, Lugar’s chief of staff told the Indianapolis Star with a laugh, “No. Hell, no<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

It’s not personal, he said, it’s just that Lugar isn’t eyeing national office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By all appearances, Barack Obama has a genuine friendship with Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, despite the fact that Lugar is a conservative Republican. The two don’t agree on much, but they’ve worked closely on counter-proliferation — a point that Obama emphasized in a new TV ad unveiled on Tuesday. “The single most important national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}