Regarding the question of possible political (or other) bias in choices for the Kluge Prize, Jonathan Wolff (Philosophy, UCL) notes,

Looking at the blurb on Pelikan it seems pretty clear what the three winners have in common: while not in religion departments, they are people who take (Christian) religion very seriously.

And reader Matthew King, a student at Northeastern Illinois University, observes:

I just wanted to humbly offer a possible explanation for the selection of Paul Ricoeur and Jaroslva Pelikan as this years recipients of the Kluge prize.  Both of these scholars are connected to the University of Chicago’s Divinity School.  Pelikan is known for his contributions to the study of Christian history and Luther, while Ricoeur is known for his hermeneutical philosophy.  What is probably not as well known is that Ricouer is well respected by several evangelical Christian "scholars" because of his contributions to biblical interpretation theory.  However, I’m not entirely sure why because I had the pleasure of working under two students of Ricoeur’s (one a Christian scholar at Trinity Divinity School just north of Chicago and the other a philosopher at my current school who no longer works in hermeneutics) and it became quite clear that the Christian scholar almost completely misunderstood Ricoeur’s theory and his philosophy.  I was told by my current teacher that Ricoeur has a decent following at conservative Christian schools (I can confirm this because my brother is currently enrolled at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and he says the same thing) and that the misunderstanding that I detected was for the most part just as wide spread among these followers.

The point is that the selection of these two scholars may not be politically motivated, but it certainly seems like a compromise.  They have decent respect in the academic community, yet conservatives can agree to them because of their connections to Christianity, even though the conservatives may be misunderstanding their real connection.  If we consider Ricoeur’s actual philosophy his selection seems acceptable at least compared to Kolakowski; but I will agree with you that Chomsky deserves this prize much more than Ricoeur.