Buckley was out of focus and the reason I cancelled my NR subscription decades ago.
He sided with Jimmy Carter in giving the Panama Canal away.
The National Review staff live in a past era when William Buckley could "excommunicate" those who opposed his definition of conservatism, such as the Old Right isolationists, the Birchers, and the Objectivists, in the 1960's. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, they attempted with some success to isolate the paleoconservatives like M.E. Bradford and Pat Buchanan, who were not isolationists, conspiracy theorists, or atheists. The magazine attempted to divine anti-Semitism out of Joseph Sobran's lack of enthusiasm for Israel, incidentally a view shared by some Jewish liberals.
However, Buckley is long dead, and the magazine's influence has waned, as has that of other publications like Human Events.