I get the impression that a lot of conservatism (in the original sense of word) is really old people yearning for something from their old days, which is just the image they have of their youth beautified by the passage of time.

I can see that with old Communists in the country I lived in: they grew up with the fire of their youthfull belief in Communism, back in the days of Fascist Dictatorship and even more so in the days of the Revolution which overthrew that Dictatorship, so they yearn for that feeling back, not for the Fascist Dictatorship but for that "simple" Communist and the fire of believing it and acting it from their youth.

The thing is, it wasn't that Communism back then was simpler (sure, the practical implementations of that ideology invariably had simple emotion-appealing slogans accessible to all people of all educational levels, but that was just the Propaganda and the reality of it was never simple), it was they themselves who were comparativelly simple as teenagers and young adults compared to their much older selves of present day.

Then around that you have a lot of young people who are attracted to simple explanations for things - same for Politics as for Religion - many of whom get swayed by those older people who trully believe that Communism of old was simple and pure.

So my theory is that it wasn't as much conservatives who took over Communist, it's that the ones who have been there and stuck with it their whole lives became conservative.