Spoiler alert: I’m a conservative. Small-c. All my life I’ve voted for candidates representing conservative parties, or municipal candidates representing conservative values. I have belonged to various conservative parties, provincial and federal, at various times.

However, I am not a Conservative conservative (capital C). Right now I belong to no political party anywhere. I don’t see that changing soon.

As a conservative, I believe in a market economy. I believe that, when it comes to government, less is more. I appreciate that taxes and government are unavoidable — but I’d still prefer less of both. I believe that governments should respect taxpayers and tax dollars and that it should operate in a transparent and accountable way.

RELATED Less than 60 per cent of Tories think their next leader can beat Trudeau

My grandparents on one side, and great grandparents on the other, were all born in Austria/Hungary/Germany. (The map has changed so many times since the late 19th century, pinpointing where my people came from is pretty challenging.) I understand intuitively that, unless you’re First Nations, you’re an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants. I don’t fear immigration and I know today’s immigration applicants want the same things my relatives wanted when they came here — a better life for themselves and their children.

And nothing interests me less than what my neighbour does, unless it somehow it affects me. Who he marries, loves, what god (if any) he worships, what he drinks or smokes — I couldn’t possibly care less, provided his parties aren’t too loud or go on too late.

So what does it says about me, as a conservative (small-c), that with the full knowledge that March 28 was the deadline to buy a capital-c Conservative membership to vote for the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, I opted not to?

I’d been a member of this party since its inception, and was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative twice. I personally know 12 out of the 14 candidates in the current leadership race. Three of them are friends of mine. But this time, I couldn’t think of a good reason to get involved.

Intolerant, climate-change-denying homophobes might be overrepresented among those who recently bought CPC memberships; they are, I suspect, a shrinking minority among small-c conservatives. And I’m quite certain that they represent an even smaller, and even faster-shrinking, segment of the Canadian voting public. Intolerant, climate-change-denying homophobes might be overrepresented among those who recently bought CPC memberships; they are, I suspect, a shrinking minority among small-c conservatives. And I’m quite certain that they represent an even smaller, and even faster-shrinking, segment of the Canadian voting public.

Maybe it doesn’t say anything at all about me. Maybe it says a lot about the party, the leadership race and the quality (and quantity) of the candidates.

Scott Gilmore published an excellent piece recently in Maclean’s magazine on why he now loathes being a Tory. It was something I could have written myself — maybe not as well as Scott did, but certainly with the same message.

This leadership race has been a train wreck, dominated by Trump Lite xenophobic dog whistles and embarrassing displays of ignorance of Canadian federalism and how our Constitution works. Part of the problem is the math. With fourteen candidates chasing the prize, a candidate needs to be colourful to attract attention.

A ‘Canadian values’ test for immigrants certainly attracts more headlines than putting the effort into developing a sensible climate change policy. Demanding the resignation of the premier of Alberta because of a carbon tax policy generates far more media heat than any sensible plan to limit growth in government spending to population growth plus inflation.

Thoughtful policy positions don’t stand a chance when the circus comes to town. The loudest and the most outrageous clowns always shout down the rational and the reasonable. By this standard, we’re led to believe that Kevin O’Leary and Kellie Leitch are frontrunners. Brad Trost also wins undeserved media attention by telling a lot of people (who never asked) that’s he’s troubled by “the whole gay thing.”

But nobody knows. Given the ranked preferential ballot and each of the 338 ridings counting equally, predicting a winner is pretty tough. Perhaps a second-tier candidate like Michael Chong or Andrew Scheer or Lisa Raitt can emerge and save the party from itself.

But I am becoming less and less hopeful. This contest will be decided ultimately by those who paid $15 for the privilege of getting involved. That means the next leader won’t necessarily be the smartest or the most electable candidate, but someone who can sell many memberships and attract second and third preferences from the competition.

Mass membership sales are always a challenge — but there’s always some low hanging fruit. Fundamentalist churches have a lot of members. Reality TV personalities have a lot of fans.

The outcome of the Conservative leadership race will be decided by the people with the strongest motivations to influence it. Any populist concept — like a xenophobic values test, or firing duly-elected premiers we don’t like, or using the army to build a human border wall — will attract subscribers with strong opinions … and to hell with the Constitution and common sense.

But here’s where the problem lies. Intolerant, climate-change-denying homophobes might be overrepresented among those who recently bought CPC memberships; they are, I suspect, a shrinking minority in the larger subset of small-c conservatives. And I’m quite certain that they represent an even smaller, and even faster-shrinking, segment of the Canadian voting public.

Populism might very well triumph next month when the Conservative Party of Canada picks its next leader. But the consequences will be dire, and inevitable: Millions of us small-c conservative fence sitters will stay seated, and the CPC as an instrument of the new hard right will become uncompetitive in the mainstream for a generation.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.