Most liberals of the last generation respected Goldwater, because he was a very “up front” guy. You knew where he stood, and you knew he was sincere in his beliefs. I think it might be a bit strong to say to say “Lionized” though.
Nixon?? The same guy who slandered Helen Ghagan wtih lies he knew that were untrue? the same guy who helped Joe McCarthy? The same guy Eisenhower said was untrustworthy?
Right. His good ideas and genuine political skill were fatally undermined by his astonishing flaws as a human being.
In Colin Powell’s defense, unlike the rest of the Bush team, I don’t think he knew he was lying. He was sold a bill of cherry-picked goods which he was then assigned to sell to the nation and world. They used his good name, then ostracized and threw him away, turning him into the least effectual Secretary of State in US history.
Sorry, I misread George HW Bush’s name in the OP. No, Bush the Elder is not particularly respected by this liberal.
Are you planning on coming back to this thread to address questions asked of you?
This is true. Nixon did advocate HCR* in his 1974 state of the Union address. And his actual imposition of a wage-price freeze was undeniably a government intervention in the free market which would be anathema to conservatives today. As for the overtures to China, this was mostly applauded by liberals, although that might not have been the case if they could have foreseen the ultimate impact on the U.S. labor market. The expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia was anathema to liberals, on the other hand.
Though clearly a duplicitous man who would have well deserved impeachment, had he stuck around for it, when you look at his policies, it turns out to be quite a mixed bag. Geopolitically he was mostly conservative, but domestically very much less so in certain areas.
Personally, he was very intelligent and had come up from an obscure, modest background–a sort of white, small-town version of the Obama story. He was someone whose natural gifts one had to respect, even if you didn’t agree with him.
*“comprehensive HC” according to the Wikipedia article.
Yes, in the same way that War of the Worlds was a sort of Martian, bellicose version of the Jesus story. 
So far, no “lionizing” on either side, then?
Well, John Locke was a liberal, and conservatives like him…
Sorry, I meant, “a white, small-town, conservative version of the Obama story”
By that standard Thomas Jefferson was a liberal for his time but conservatives idolize him.
Anyways I’ve seen in Great Debates lots of praise for “past conservatives” especially Goldwater and Eisenhower.
IIRC, we generally only praise Goldwater relative to modern conservatives, and even then, it’s usually only for the stuff he said and did after his political career was already over.
So much to chew over here.
There’s a running (accurate) joke on the Right (the folks at National Review like to comment on this)-- the Left only likes conservatives after they’re dead. Eisenhower, Goldwater, Reagan, Buckley… many on the Left hated all of them to varying degrees, but the moment they’re no longer around to defend themselves (or advocate for conservative causes), they become useful as a silent weapon against current conservative thinkers and politicians.
It’s lazy, and inaccurate.
As long as we’re on typology, for American conservatism in general, it is often argued on the Right that they are the “true” liberals. Full disclosure: I’m conservative, so perhaps I’m biased, but from a historical perspective this is accurate. Liberalism used to be just that, a solitary word without adjectives, to distinguish itself from European monarchism and early radicalism (anarchism & Jacobinism). This was the American political tradition, informed by the likes of Locke and Burke. It wasn’t until the introduction of Socialist and Communist movements in the late 19th century that the Left found itself in a typological schism of how to define themselves, and contrast themselves with the other great reform movement, i.e. liberalism. The American and British non-radical Left adopted “social liberalism” and “progressivism” as their banners, but for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many on the Left swam in a muddied ideological sea. By the 20th century, the Left had metamorphosed into a wide variety of political thought: communism, socialism, fascism, social liberalism, progressivism (with the members of the Left moving across those categories quite freely, back and forth, at different points in their lives). In America, social liberalism eventually prevailed, while in other nations other Leftist movements achieved dominance (communism in the Soviet Union, fascism in Italy and Germany, socialism in France & to a lesser extent the UK).
By this point, there were two types of liberals in the U.S.: “classical” liberals and “social” liberals. However, since classical liberalism was the pre-existing political philosophy, by definition, they became “conservatives.” Eventually, social liberals just became liberals. And that’s how you ended up here today.
Of course, it’s frustrating that the simple labels are used in a vacuum when in fact it’s important to understand their origins and contexts. An American Republican and a Taliban leader are both “conservative” insofar as they act to conserve their own political traditions. The obvious difference, of course, is that both are conserving radically different things. That doesn’t stop the angry Left from using “conservative” as a shorthand for “all things we hate,” with the aforementioned example being prevalent (“the Taliban wing of the Republican party”… oh, right, I forgot about them… WTF?!).
Anyway, back to the OP… I’m not sure there’s been much of a rapprochement / reassessment of conservatives by liberals or vice versa. What’s happened instead has either been the fading of memory-- people forget why they ever argued in the first place over what appear in hindsight to be petty disputes-- or the aforementioned disingenuous “dead conservatives/liberals are good conservatives/liberals” argument.
Personally, I miss the Harry Truman / JFK / Scoop Jackson movement in the Democratic Party. Members of the early 20th century Democratic Party flirted heavily with socialism, communism and fascism, indulging in many varieties of “grass is greener” envy. It wasn’t until the Cold War began that the Democratic Party consciously chose to separate and distinguish itself from the international Left (which had come to be dominated by Soviet communism). That movement survived only for a short time-- 1946 through roughly 1972, with some lights lasting through the 1980s-- but I believe that it’s no coincidence that an era where the politics “stopped at the water’s edge” coincided with the greatest proportional rise of American power and influence.
Admittedly, that’s a bit like stealing bases-- “I respect the liberals who agreed with conservatives!”-- but hey, my opinion.
Unfortunately, today, there’s no real hope of finding that kind of consensus again. 9/11 might have offered that opportunity, but it was spoiled. One can quibble over where the blame belongs, but the facts remain that the American Left is far more comfortable looking overseas for its liberal inspirations than it is here at home (i.e., Europe has universal health care, Europe hates the war in Iraq, China can order people to build solar panels, etc.).