Story highlights Is Trump himself a conservative -- and does anyone here care?

Attendees here have struggled at times to define where Trump fits in the conservative firmament

Oxon Hill, Maryland (CNN) Never Trump nevermore.

A year after the 2016 edition of the long-running Conservative Political Action Conference was thrown into an uproar by the Republican primary front-runner, President Donald Trump -- who snubbed the gathering last March -- arrives here in 2017 as the face of a new, if elusive brand of conservatism.

But is Trump himself a conservative -- and does anyone care?

"I think he has conservative instincts and I think he is starting to govern as a conservative. But up until he started making those decisions as president, it was hard to know," said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which first held this annual event in 1973.

"People say he's more of a populist," Schlapp added. "That's probably fair. He's somebody who appeals to a wide swath of people on some key issues. I think he's less philosophically grounded, maybe, than other politicians."

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