How a Conservative party BBQ became Pierre Poilievre's red-meat cookout

At a fundraiser for today's federal Conservatives, nearly everything is designed to be an applause line. Even the take-home party favour gift bags.

Visitors to the Conservatives' 1,400-person Stampede barbecue Saturday night were offered gift bags, or tiny little gauzy pouches to be more specific.

They contained Canada flag lapel pins, a couple of Lifesaver breath mints, and the ticket-holder's choice of buttons.

One said "get your hands off my six shooter," another one went with the intriguingly (given that this is a federal party) anti-federal slogan "more Alberta, less Ottawa." The other two took swings at Justin Trudeau: "All hat no cattle," and "Buck off, Trudeau."

Serving up red meat's a no-brainer, both on the paper plates and from the podium. One can never go wrong with this Calgary crowd praising oil and gas, mocking the Liberals and Trudeau, and taking a few swings at the media.

The introduction of politicians at the start of the pre-supper ceremonies can seem designed to get partisans' handclaps and hoots going. Premier Jason Kenney got a solid standing ovation from this crowd, a reaction that may have seemed elusive among his provincial United Conservatives as they pushed him from office.

If this sort of audio straw poll turns out to be indicative of the result of a leadership contest that won't be settled until October, then early congratulations go to future United Conservative Party leader Danielle Smith, who earned cheers far louder than the rest of the provincial pack, including distant decibel-level runner-up Rebecca Schulz, perhaps enjoying a tad of momentum from Rona Ambrose, the former federal interim leader, becoming her new campaign chair.

And then there was Pierre Poilievre, the widely perceived federal leadership front-runner whose reception among this crowd rivalled the intense, leap-to-their-feet enthusiasm for Stephen Harper, back in the days when he was prime minister and both the hometown host and keynote speaker for the Conservatives' marquee annual summer fundraiser.

The reaction to Poilievre's presence at times made it difficult to distinguish this party-sanctioned fundraising event from a Poilievre campaign rally, the ones that began attracting attention to him as a phenomenon of a candidate.

Attendees lined up across the Heritage Park field to meet or take pictures with him.

During his six-minute speech — all federal leadership candidates got six minutes of stage time or so — they cheered him introducing his mom. They cheered him recalling a teenage summer job, picking up trash at the Stampede grounds. Cheered his promise to "make this the freest nation on earth" (it remains unclear which nation Canada would wrest this title from).

He induced laughter or clapping almost every 10 or 15 seconds, leading to a crescendo, his quoting former Tory prime minister John Diefenbaker: "I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear … This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind." The audience's hoots and whistles nearly drowned out his "thank you very much" salutation.

Two leadership rivals, Leslyn Lewis and Roman Baber, spoke before Poilievre, and Scott Aitchison was a last-minute scratch. So the unenviable task of following the apparent front-runner fell to Jean Charest, the former Quebec premier and one of the only men in attendance who bucked the cowboy dress-up tradition and arrived in a political standard-issue navy blazer.

He doffed the suit jacket to speak in his white dress shirt, and Conservatives greeted him with several boos peppered in among the applause. He's been booed before, when he called February's convoy protest "illegal" at a think-tank conference in Ottawa. In Calgary, the hostile response came before he even spoke.