Political conservatism obeys none of the other dictionary definitions. It's just a label. It's the label chosen by generations of influential public figures whose general philosophy is "Well someone has to be the king."

Isn't this kinda true of most politically-associated labels? Communism, socialism, capitalism, egalitarianism, progressivism... they can all be thought of as general ideas, but when someone actually uses them, they could be referring to a more specific concept, or twisting the idea a bit, or referring to a specific person's definition of the idea and its kinda hard to know how to interpret it...