Writer has a political ideology, as most do people

By Letter to the Editor on December 20, 2017.

Re: “Poisonous partisanship at the ballot box,” Dec. 2

I have spent some time reflecting on Peter Mueller’s column. He portrays himself as a political pragmatist. With all due respect I would state that we all have a political view or ideology and that political pragmatism is very rare among the electorate. Perusing this piece I am convinced that Mueller is definitely not a political pragmatist but a person with a political ideology like the rest of us. His “progressive” views and party allegiance are very apparent and in our democracy they should be accepted along with opposing views.

I feel umbrage in his description of our recent byelection. I’m proud this constituency elected a principled man of good moral character and a man of faith as our “voice in the wilderness” as Mueller describes it. I would categorize the results of as a confirmation of our conservative principles and not party allegiance.

Mueller’s description of Premier Rachel Notley as “the perfect pragmatist” is definitely not based on her historical political ideology. During her time as the leader of the opposition her party’s stance was always in opposition to the energy sector. Federally and now also in British Columbia we can clearly see where the NDP political ideology stands relative to the energy sector. When Notley became premier she surrounded herself with some bureaucrats that were ideologically anti-energy and anti-pipelines. When this became public knowledge they quietly left their positions. One of these advisers even worked on the election platform for the B.C. NDP while being employed by the Government of Alberta. I do applaud her for her current pipeline campaign, but I believe it is based on political expediency and contradicts the popularly held NDP ideology.

It is perplexing that the political “left” of the political spectrum believes that their ideology is the only correct ideology and the rest of us practise “tribalism” as Mueller states. His disdain for an alternate political ideology is very evident when he calls Jason Kenney an “attack dog” of former prime minister Stephen Harper. These verbal attacks on any opposing ideology just reinforces the fact that Mueller is definitely not a political pragmatist but a political ideologist with a “politically narrow” (as he states) point of view.

Hal Banasch

Redcliff

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