Analysis | The rise and fall of Milo Yiannopoulos exposes latest front in US conservatives’ civil war

The victories of Republicans up and down the ticket last November temporarily papered over the major fault lines that divided the Republican base throughout the 2016 election.

But those differences are beginning to surface again, and nowhere will such tensions be more evident than at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, which offers the first test of what it means to be a conservative in the Trump era.

The conference, a long-time gathering spot for grass-roots conservative activists from across the country, will open its doors Wednesday evening in National Harbor, Maryland, right outside of Washington, for a conversation that stretches through Saturday. CPAC, as the conference is known, always has come with its share of controversies over speakers and groups represented – but this year’s event is stoking particularly fierce debate over who should be considered part of the conservative movement.

A weekend debacle involving the inviting, and then disinviting, of now ex-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, a hugely controversial figure, has some long-time CPAC stalwarts shuddering over the direction of American conservatism, and questioning why CPAC organisers would have invited him in the first place.

Yet even without him, the CPAC agenda still features a number of speakers who have embraced the populist nationalism that propelled President Donald Trump’s campaign – but that is anathema to more traditional conservative values.

“At this point, what is conservatism in the age of Trump?” asked conservative writer and Trump critic David French, who in 2012 won CPAC’s Ronald Reagan Award but will not be attending this year.

“Because it’s starting to look an awful lot like just pure media criticism as opposed to the advancement of a coherent set of ideas grounded in the Constitution, centred around individual liberty, respect for life and strong national defence.

“This isn’t unique to CPAC,” he said, “but the conservative movement itself is in a state of flux right now, and the upheaval and turmoil you’ve seen over the Milo invitation and (it being) rescinded … is kind of a microcosm of that.”