Welch was WRONG!!!! about Eisenhower, and you’re wrong about Buckley. Buckley (and Goldwater’s) biggest sin was opposing the Civil Rights movement which cost the Republican Party a great percentage of the Black vote. But in his day Buckley was practically the only media voice opposing the march of socialism in the U.S. He opposed Robert Welch because he was nut who did great harm to the conservative movement by calling everything that moved communist. Welch and people like the anti-Semitic Willis Carto of the Liberty Lobby were two people/orgs. regular conservatives were well rid of.
But what you learn when you go into the history is that they were communists - or communist enablers - it’s an astounding thing - no one could be more surprised than I was when I finally learned the details and connected the dots.