I don’t know what you mean. “Liberal” was in scare-quotes because that’s just the word that rightwing talk radio used to describe anyone on the left (or even center), and they said the word with disgust.

Yes, I know libertarians call themselves “classical liberals” and the left uses “neoliberal” as a similar epithet for anyone more centrist than themselves, but that was the connotation of the word.

I meant that this happened in the past 10 years. “Liberal” wasn’t associated almost solely to “left”. It was generally accepted. This “classical liberal” euphemism, in its current meaning, is also kinda new, and almost everybody who uses this nowadays is not associated to liberalism at all.

Well in rightwing talk radio land, “liberal” has meant “left wing” since at least the 1990s, probably earlier.