“Stockman ranked especially conservative on fiscal issues, but less so on social and foreign policy issues, which dragged down his composite score. Social policy was Cornyn’s most conservative category.”
Ah hah
Maybe one of the issues is that “Conservative” might mean “hawk” on some foreign policy issues (like intervening in Libya for instance), and yet some very good Conservatives are not automatically reflexive to get our military involved in something.
On the “social conservative” issues, not all Conservatives agree on which side the big-brother hand falls, universally. It can depend very much on the specific issue, and some very good Conservatives can disagree if a matter is a matter of personal conscience vs involvement of legal mandates.
So I can see how someone more focused on our spiraling increases in the size of the federal government, federal power, federal spending and federal debt - fiscal matters, and the matters the GOP is most famous for siding with the Dims on, could maybe seem “less” Conservative than someone who mostly matches what the social conservatives and foreign policy hawks want to hear.
The man most likely to “grow” in office, is the one who is not conservative to begin with, for instance, a republican who is only a little bit conservative, as you just described.