Sure feels like it. I've seen countless low effort propaganda posts from Throwaway and their complaints anytime critical thought enters the discussion.
This community doesn't appear abandoned, it just isn't a locked down echo chamber like r/conservative on reddit, the place where users are banned, posts are locked to specific users, and topics which go against the narrative are taboo. That's straight up unhealthy, unproductive, and dangerous. We can do better here.
Full disclosure: I am not a conservative myself but I appreciate an open community which doesn't shut out discussion.
I would say that it can at its core, but most politicians and parties who claim to be conservative cannot, especially in the US, because they aren't even remotely conservative anymore and are just using the name to pander for votes.
If you wanted to list republicans that are conservative, you'd need to dust off a history book.
No, its up, its just that federation is kinda hard.
I chose lemm.ee because thats my home instance, and that keeps federation issues to a minimum. Plus its a pretty big instance and it seems to have chill admins.