BC Conservative Leader John Rustad was supposed to bathe Saturday in the success that comes from reviving a party barely breathing two years ago to within a chip shot of power in mid-October.

But there was hot water of another kind at the party’s first post-election convention: a churlish attempt by a clutch of his MLAs, failed candidates and disaffected party members to forget about the coattails they’d ridden to the legislature, and scald the leader at the earliest opportunity.

It was an unfortunate backstory in what ought to have been purely a celebration of exceeding expectations and an early start on a strategy to secure government at the party's largest-ever convention of about 750. Instead, the party brass had to reject what would have likely been dissident convention delegate applications. Rustad mustered a friendly slate for the board and enough votes to support their election, and demonstrated some courtesy and compromise to the party in how he tinkered with its constitution.

His slate passed, the party’s constitution didn’t prove a pitched battle, and the policy resolutions neither moved the party further rightward nor toward the middle, even though there are pressures to do both on the........

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