Nixon was quite liberal in many ways - ending a Democrat war by accepting a loss rather than escalating it, government price and wage controls, enemies list. Nixon epitomizes the liberal ideal that some of us are indeed smarter than all of us, and attempted to spread federal government control. He even opened up relations with Communist China.
I wouldn't characterize Vietnam as a Democratic war-it spanned back decades (but I agree LBJ really doubled down over and over) and as someone sweating out the draft back then I certainly disagree with the characterization Nixon accepted a loss rather than escalating the war-remember his secret escalation of the war into Cambodia, for example? As far as EPA formation goes, I think Nixon was more swept along with the tide rather than leading the charge.
And China-well you remember as much as I do how surprised we all were that the fanatic anti-communist Nixon opened China, but with a couple of decades retrospect the corporate motives are a whole lot clearer. Remember how excited the country was back then at this huge new market opening up to American goods? Pretty ironic these days.
It just seems hilarious that someone that knows hardly anything about Nixon claims he was liberal. All I can say is sometime in the recent past US conservatives took a huge swing back to 1920s (and earlier) style small government conservatism, ignoring all the lessons of the Depression, WWII and the golden era thereafter. These days it seems like some are pushing as hard as they can to emulate the decline of the British empire rather than preserve and grow what makes America great.
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