Iran war divides conservatives on and off stage at CPAC | CNN Politics

As the daughter of an American oil field worker living in Iran in the 1970s, Blake Zummo watched as the streets around her regularly descended into violence in the years before the Iranian revolution. Now 62 and residing in Texas, she rejects arguments — including from fellow Republicans meeting this week in the Dallas suburbs for the Conservative Political Action Conference — that President Donald Trump is dragging the United States into an unnecessary war in the Middle East. “This is finally the first president that had the nerve to go in and do what needed to be done to protect the American people,” Zummo said outside the conference hall. The conference known as CPAC opened Thursday against the backdrop of a conflict with Iran that is exposing a growing chasm in the GOP. The divisions — playing out especially online but also each time conservatives gather in public — have unnerved a Republican Party already straining to hold together Trump’s coalition heading into the midterm elections. CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp acknowledged there will be “a lot of conversations about the consequences” of the war with Iran if Republicans lose the House and Senate in the fall,