What if, thanks to the 1992 election going the other way, the Waco Siege occured under HW Bush instead of Clinton?
This was the era of the Satanic panic. Given what Koresh was accused of, Bush's AG would have reacted in a similar manner. Mind, this might drive the radical right (I'm taking McVeigh here, not the Tea Party types) into turning against the GOP as well even more.Well, supposedly one of the reasons it became the gong show that it did is that Janet Reno, feminist-leaning prosecutor with a history of going after child-sex abuse, overreacted out of concern for children allegedly being molested by Koresh. If that's true(and I don't really know), the GOP might not have someone like that as Attorney-General.
One could also speculate that Bush would be sensitive to pissing off religious conservatives and not want to get into a bloodbath with the Davidians, but that's probably an overstated case: most Christian Coalition types would probably regard freaky Adventist offshoots as highly heterodox and anti-social(ie. rather than try to get the rest of the country to follow Jesus, like Falwell and Robertson do, they prefer to hide away in a bunker worshipping some wackjob as a false-prophet and practicing polygamy). So, it might have done down roughly the same as in real life.
I know some of the militia people(most notoriously McVeigh) lionized the Branch Davidians, but I think they(the militias) were an overrated force in politics anyway.
I know that preparations for the Siege began while HW was still President.This was the era of the Satanic panic. Given what Koresh was accused of, Bush's AG would have reacted in a similar manner. Mind, this might drive the radical right (I'm taking McVeigh here, not the Tea Party types) into turning against the GOP as well even more.