Why and how did Nixon's presidency, despite Watergate, start the Republican ascendency of the following period?

This question points to an apparent paradox in American political history. The Watergate scandal, occurring as it did under a Republican presidency, might have been crippling for the GOP. But it was not, and the 1970s witnessed the rise of a national conservative movement that swept Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980 and permanently shattered what has sometimes been called a "liberal consensus" after World War II. There are many reasons why this...

This question points to an apparent paradox in American political history. The Watergate scandal, occurring as it did under a Republican presidency, might have been crippling for the GOP. But it was not, and the 1970s witnessed the rise of a national conservative movement that swept Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980 and permanently shattered what has sometimes been called a "liberal consensus" after World War II. There are many reasons why this is the case, but one is that Watergate caused many Americans to lose faith in the presidency and the federal government in general. This, ironically given that Nixon was a Republican, played into the hands of conservatives whose core message was, as Ronald Reagan put it in his first inaugural address in 1981, "Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem." Seen in this light, Nixon's wrongdoing was the inevitable conclusion of a state that had grown in power since World War II. Perhaps more importantly, the Nixon administration had witnessed the first waves of an economic downturn marked by high unemployment and inflation that dealt a severe blow to the Ford and Carter administrations that followed Nixon. Additionally, Republicans could look at Nixon's campaigns of 1968 and 1972 and see the efficacy of appealing to working class white men, including union members, formerly loyal Democratic voters. Nixon was especially diligent in cultivating southern whites by suggesting he would rein in civil rights policies like busing and affirmative action. Conservative southern whites and blue-collar Northerners would form the backbone of what were sometimes called "Reagan Democrats" in the 1980s. So Nixon's presidency, while ending in disgrace, actually ushered in a period of conservative dominance that has profoundly altered the political landscape.