GOP politics are drowning in conspiracy theories. Where are leaders to tell the truth? | Opinion

We miss responsible Republicans like former Missouri Sen. John Danforth — leaders who seek out and tell the truth to the public rather than pander to the most outlandish fantasies entertained by their constituents.

There have been many occasions in recent years to make that lament. The latest is the approaching 30th anniversary of the deadly 51-day standoff at Waco, Texas, where 76 people died on April 19, 1993, at the end of the confrontation between cult leader David Koresh and the federal government.

As The Star’s Jonathan Shorman reports, Danforth was a key figure in the aftermath of that tragedy: He was appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno in 1999 to investigate allegations that federal law enforcement started the fire that destroyed the Branch Davidian compound and took the lives of so many people within it.

Sixty-one percent of Americans believed the feds had started the fire, according to one poll. Danforth and his team — after a 14-month investigation that interviewed 1,001 witnesses — found otherwise in a detailed 207-page report.

“The government of the United States and its agents are not responsible for the April 19, 1993, tragedy at Waco,” Danforth reported. The Davidians “set the complex on fire; they refused to come out of the complex after they started the fire; and they shot themselves.”

Danforth’s report was no apologia for the government, however.

The investigation also detailed how FBI and Department of Justice officials spent years denying that the FBI fired pyrotechnic rounds at the Davidian compound. While those rounds didn’t cause or spread the fire, “these statements were false,” Danforth concluded, “and the failure to acknowledge the use of pyrotechnic tear gas rounds for more than six years has greatly undermined public confidence in government.”

In real life, the truth is often complicated and messy. Danforth’s report on Waco reflected that.

But in politics — and especially in the murky realm of conspiracy theories — complexity is often ignored for simple narratives and easy scapegoats. And 30 years after Waco, conspiracy theorizing is having another moment.

“I think that there is an appetite for conspiracy theories. I think that’s just out there,” Danforth told Shorman. “I think right now the political style, particularly in my party, is to bring” conspiracy theories “to life,” he said. “It’s a tactic.”

Donald Trump spread lies on Obama, COVID, election

Danforth, of course, was speaking of the Republican Party and its leader, Donald Trump. The former president has made a habit of conspiracy theorizing and magical thinking to advance his own career and interests. He jumped into politics by promoting the lie that Barack Obama was secretly born abroad. He tried to bluff his way through the COVID-19 pandemic by endorsing quack cures like hydroxychloroquine. Most notoriously, he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection while inventing and spreading lies that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him.

Way too many modern-day Republicans have gone along. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall — a medical doctor — bizarrely bucked science and plain old common sense by not only recommending hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus, but also announcing he was taking it himself. Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt has recently raised the specter of right-wing bogeymen like George Soros to explain Trump’s indictment in New York, while Sen. Josh Hawley will forever be defined by the fact that he took the former president’s election lies and ran with them in a deservedly doomed effort to oppose the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

The funny thing about conspiracy theories is that they so often posit a “real story” behind the news of the day, full of convoluted narratives, nefarious motives and string-pulling puppet masters — when so often the people promoting them those theories are acting in their own obvious and naked self-interest. They’ve always been with us, but the internet and especially social media have supercharged their power.

And a lot of them don’t pass the silly test — or shouldn’t to any rational adult. In Kansas City, the foolishness has surfaced in this week’s elections, with local candidates trafficking in ludicrous claims about litter boxes in public schools for kids who supposedly “identify as cats.”

The New Yorker’s famous “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon also turns 30 this year. What’s happened to our collective internet nonsense meter? Because it’s clearly on the fritz.

Trump embraced conspiracy theories because they were the quickest and easiest route to obtaining and keeping power. Hawley and Schmitt have followed suit, apparently for the same reasons.

Which is why it is difficult to imagine a modern day U.S. attorney general calling on Hawley or Schmitt to lead the sort of investigation that Danforth conducted more than two decades ago. Would they be willing to tell their supporters inconvenient and messy truths? Would they be willing to spend 14 months of their lives in pursuit of those truths?

We’re skeptical. Conspiracy theories are easier and more lucrative. In the GOP, at least, the age of John Danforth is over.