They have co-opted the term because it lends them credibility. They are not conservative, they are a death-cult.
Being ‘conservative’ in a political sense was once about how much you thought the government should pull economic levers. At least in Canada, where our Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties were once fairly close together.
“Conservatives” today are fundamentalists, which means they would make very poor conservatives, even if they knew what economic levers were. Gotta move beyond the fundamentals eventually.