I think that's quite a leap. Nixon was not conservative, at least not much moreso than J. F. Kennedy, and in some areas, notably less so. What he mostly was, was part of a different power structure.
The media at that time considered Nixon to be the personification of Conservatism... today we realize that in effect he really wasn't, but that doesn't matter in the context of how Nixon was perceived by the media, and that perception also continues to this day. For them to now make him out to be something else would be for them to destroy the legacy they have worked to create.
Remember that there was essentially no social conservatism in 1972 (Roe hadn't yet begun to shape it); Nixon was as close to "conservative" as it was known in those days, and it started long before his terms as Veep. "Conservative" was anticommunist, and Nixon had earned his stripes against Hiss. If he hadn't been PERCEIVED as conservative, his negotiations with the Soviets and Chinese could not have happened. The media, steeped in liberalism since the mid-fifties, hated Nixon every bit as much as they hated Taft or Reagaon or, when they DARED, Bill Buckley.