And, unfortunately, also a believer in govt done right means having many regulations, but being noble and efficient with them at least while he's in office. That's how Trump runs things and he's good at it. And Trump has removed a lot of regulations, but not as many as I'd like. Or put another way, not as many as Trump hasn't removed as many regulations as his the Dims before him added. When the next Dim is in the WH he'll have plenty of already existing regulations to use against Americans before adding more.
See my post just above.
I view Nixon as largely a man of his time. Sure, there were people like Barry Goldwater who were more true Conservative (as many of us view Conservatives today, especially if you read his excellent book “Conscience of A Conservative” which was published in 1960, long before people really put pen to paper to define “Conservatism”... but Nixon was not that far out of the mainstream of conservatism at that time in 1960 or even 1970, in my opinion. (That book had an outsized impact on me from a historical Conservative perspective when I read it for the first time just a few years ago)
Fortunately for Conservatives, that mainstream of conservatism has been re-routed more towards what WE see as “true” Conservatism today by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, and is closer to “Big ‘C’ Conservatism” today than it was back in 1970 or even 1980.
That is the lens through which I view Nixon. He did plenty of non-Conservative things, but we have learned many (though not all) lessons from those actions.