I'd say that looking at ten or so conservative thought leaders counts as a pretty extensive look, especially for a non-conservative who thinks conservatism is a fraud. Again, that negative attitude might have biased all my writings on conservatism, in which case I'd have misrepresented the authors. And that would have to be shown. If I've represented them fairly, and shown how their views boil down to mine, that would be a robust test of my hypothesis.
I'm aware there are mixed positions, such as economic conservatism together with social liberalism. I suspect that those worldviews are incoherent and not fully thought through. Depending on what's meant by these terms, economic conservatism could undermine liberal values. Or economic "conservatism" might be a euphemism for classical liberalism, so there would be no conflict after all. In any case, these are special cases. Maybe I'll write a case study of one such mixed position, to see how I'd analyze it.
The reason I don't talk just about policy is because I'm writing philosophy, not political science. In this series, though, I did write a long article on conservative policies, and I showed how they systematically entail social Darwinism (link below).
Conservative positions don't pop out of thin air. They follow from a worldview or from some bedrock assumptions and values. I focus on understanding that bedrock because the policies follow trivially from it. My hypothesis can be put thusly: Assume the very worst of conservatives' philosophy, and you can predict exactly what policies they support. Conservatism can be reconstructed on the basis of the worst-case scenario, philosophically speaking.
I'll try to figure out what to say about your idiosyncratic view of game theory and conservatism when I write up my thoughts on it. I have one other article to write first. I suspect, though, that your view is a meta-one and thus is a rival of my meta-explanation of conservatism and liberalism. We're both explaining how these values arise in history or in an evolutionary process. You emphasize competition, natural selection, or workarounds for game-theoretic reasoning, whereas I emphasize the transition from animality to personhood.
The more pertinent question, I think, is whether conservatism can be justified on those game-theoretic or pragmatic grounds, and whether that violates the predictions made by my hypothesis.
