What will CPAC tell us about the future of Trump and the Republican Party?

The former president makes a return from political hiding on Sunday, seeking to regain control of a divided Republican Party ahead of a rumoured 2024 run. Sean O’Grady explains what’s at stake at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference

Donald Trump speaks at last year’s CPAC (AFP/Getty)

The Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, is a sort of right-wing equivalent of those Socialist International movements that used to foster fraternal links between left-wing parties around the world (and which inevitably fell into factionalism).

The CPAC similarly has no formal role as a quasi-political party, but it basically acts as a loose grouping of like-minded social conservatives, economic liberals within the US Republican Party. It holds an annual get-together, this year virtually and physically in Orlando, Florida. Though primarily an American-focused event, it has also welcomed the likes of Nigel Farage and Australian premier Scott Morrison, and international CPAC meetings have been convened in Australia, Brazil and Japan. As conservative attitudes and policies have grown more prevalent within the US and indeed around the world since the CPAC was first convened in 1974, so has the CPAC grown in influence and importance, peaking during the Trump presidency.