It's painful to watch so much paranoid delusion. The answer to the question is exceedingly simple, but you don't want to hear it. Nobody in power wanted to go back. After the first few landings, the public became bored and tuned it out. Congress cut the space budget to a fraction of the Apollo level (it was a national crash program) and decided to continue with a Space Shuttle, planetary probes, a Space Station, and orbital telescopes. The Moon was a political dead letter. Everyone was oohing and ahhing over stunning pictures from the Hubble telescope.

Meanwhile other rocket technology was being developed by private industry, just fine. But who had the money to return? No one. All the moaners and the groaners have been silent up to this point---but right on time to complain that somebody else is not providing them the entertainment they think they rightly deserve. Therefore, it must be an evil plot that is preventing it.

The only thing that has prevented it is people sitting on their collective asses, waiting for their entitlement. They should look in the mirror and ask "What have I ever done to return us to the Moon."