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Bell: Avi Lewis riles up Alberta — Smith says he's a communist, Nenshi disowns him

New radical NDP Leader Avi Lewis and Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, Danielle Smith's UCP tries to tie the two together

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Avi Lewis is Naheed Nenshi’s nightmare. He will no doubt cause Nenshi to lose sleep.

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Nenshi is the Alberta NDP leader.

Lewis is the newly-elected federal NDP leader who doesn’t want new “dirty pipelines” or fossil fuel development.

Lewis is a sharp turn to the left for the federal NDP and that’s putting it mildly.

On Monday, Premier Danielle Smith called him “pretty communist.”

It’s no surprise Nenshi takes mere seconds on the weekend to try to distance himself from Lewis.

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Nenshi says the federal NDP under Lewis will head in a direction that’s not in the interests of Albertans.

Nenshi tells us he is not even a member of the federal NDP and nor are many Alberta NDP members.

Nenshi did not travel to Winnipeg to the federal NDP convention where the victory of Lewis was announced but some NDP members of the Alberta legislature did attend.

The Alberta NDP leader insists he is a real pipeline guy.

He wants a pipeline to the west coast. He wants to look at a pipeline going east. He wants to look at pipelines going in all directions.

He sounds like he loves pipelines as much as Premier Danielle Smith.

But Nenshi believes he is stronger and smarter than Smith.

He insists he doesn’t really care what Lewis and the federal NDP say or do.

He says his fight is with Smith and what he feels is “the separatist UCP.”

Nenshi doesn’t get off that easy.

It doesn’t take long for Smith and the UCP to pitch their political equation.

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Nenshi is Lewis, Lewis is Nenshi and the NDP is the NDP.

The UCP members of the legislature speak of Nenshi’s “new anti-pipeline boss.”

They quote Lewis saying he wants Nenshi to be the next premier of Alberta and how he is utterly devoted to Nenshi’s victory and how they are kindred souls in spirit and share “fundamental values.”

Every time Lewis tells how much he is cool with Nenshi he is doing the Alberta NDP leader no favours.

The UCP members of the legislature say the NDP is now the party of Lewis no matter how Nenshi “dresses up the NDP.”

Standing up in the legislature, Smith claims Nenshi is not really upset Lewis won the federal NDP.

The premier says Nenshi could have rallied all the people who voted for him to be Alberta NDP leader and stopped Lewis from winning.

After all, Nenshi got more votes in his leadership win than Avi Lewis did in his race to the top.

Smith at a news conference talked about Lewis as a “radical eco-socialist” and a “pretty communist” individual “talking about nationalizing everything from food to building houses to construction companies” and “wanting everyone to have a heat pump and take an EV bus to work.”

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The premier also claimed the Alberta NDP can’t go a different route than the federal party because, she says, the principles of the Alberta NDP cannot be in conflict with the federal NDP.

You can expect Smith and the UCP to keep hammering at the NDP brand. You could even say they’re having fun.

Will the Lewis-Nenshi connection the UCP is making stick to the Alberta NDP boss? No one can say for certain.

On Monday, Lewis did say he and the Alberta NDP “don’t have to agree on every little thing.”

Nenshi has to tell Lewis to shut up.

A few souls have said Nenshi has to do much more to put daylight between himself and Lewis and the federal NDP.

What could that be? Could that be something as a complete break, as big as a name change?

Would that be a hard thing to do?

After all, many Alberta NDP voters were actually Liberal voters back in the day when the Liberals were the main opposition party before they took the long march to being irrelevant.

There are also Alberta NDP voters who are former Progressive Conservatives.

And Nenshi is not exactly an NDP true believer. In the last Alberta election he gave the NDP an eleventh-hour endorsement that was more about just stopping a  Smith victory.

I call the Alberta NDP the Nenshi Democratic Party.

I know the people who have been with the NDP through all their battles, their trials and tribulations. They are bright orange NDP and I respect their commitment to their cause.

If you have a Raj Against The Machine T-shirt you get where I’m coming from.

Is it time to makeover the self-styled progressives?

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