Agreed. If you run, win, and perform as a conservative, chances are you will win again. This will happen if your core demographic of orginal constituents, stick aroud for your next election. So many different possibilities happen, including redistricting. You could have a solid conservative to moderate district one day and the next day you've been gerrymandered, so a HUGE CHUNK of low income welfare housing has been added to your district while the conservative chunk is deleted out...Do you really think you are going to have the identical campaign that you ran on last time? In your heart you are indeed a conservative, but you'll either lose BIG on a explicit conservative platform(which I know many here feel is OK) or you lose small on a moderate platform preferring to stick to fiscal issues...not social ones this time around.
I understand that that may be the case in ohio,pa va etc. Here in georgia it will be some time before running as anything but conservative will bear fruit.