The Republican Reformation

Markadelphia has yet again vented his spleen about the Republican Party and how it is ultimately doomed, but again I think he is off base. It's not doomed, it's just going through a very messy Reformation, as England did during the rule of Henry VIII. The Tea Partyers see themselves as saviors of the Republican Party, modern Luthers, but a better analogy is Thomas Cromwell.

At that time the Catholic Church was riven by schism. Lutherans in the Germanic countries split off from Rome. Luther felt the papacy was corrupt, it was obsessed with money and material goods, it allowed sinners to buy indulgences, it engaged in idolatry, it had too many saints and minor deities like Mary, it forbade the common people to read the word of God (William Tyndale translated the Bible into English and was hanged for it), and it set the priesthood up as a wall between the people and Christ.

In England this played out differently. There were some Lutheran-style reformationists, but there were many who remained loyal to the Catholic Church, including the Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and her daughter Mary, who eventually became queen. Catherine could not give Henry a son and he wanted the marriage dissolved so he could remarry a more fecund bride.

Thomas More, Henry's chancellor, was a solid Catholic. He opposed the Reformation and burned heretics at the stake (he was eventually canonized). He was opposed to Henry's divorce, and was ultimately executed.

Thomas Cromwell, who became Henry's chief minister, used his position to push the English Church into the Reformation, rounding up and executing his religious and political enemies. He also closed down many monasteries and other religious institutions and took their money for the king and himself.

(Incidentally, this history makes it obvious why America's founding fathers believed wholeheartedly in the separation of church and state. These very conflicts caused so many people to flee England to America. It wasn't Muslims killing Christians, this was Christians killing Christians because one believed that holy wafers were actually Christ's flesh, and the other thought it was just a bland cracker.)

Cromwell got Henry his divorce from Catherine, and the English church split from Rome. Henry married Anne Boleyn, who bore him Elizabeth who eventually became queen. Anne never gave Henry a son and was ultimately executed on charges of infidelity and incest, which were almost certainly trumped up. Henry then married Jane Seymour, who did give him a son, but she died in childbirth.

It was Cromwell's fanatical zeal that did him in. He forced Henry into a marriage with Anne of Cleves in order to more closely ally England with the Lutheran countries. Henry married Ann just five days after meeting her, even though he had no attraction to her, and the marriage was annulled before being consummated. Cromwell was executed for treason, heresy and corruption. But his real crime was being a bad matchmaker.

Then Henry married Catherine Howard, a girl many years his junior, who did commit adultery, and was executed for it. Finally he married Catherine Parr who outlived him.

What can we learn from this history? Cromwell's Reformationist zeal is much like the Tea Party's. He was willing to kill on the slightest pretext of heresy, in exactly the same way the Tea Party radicals are willing, nay, eager, to destroy traditionally conservative Republicans like Orrin Hatch. The Tea Party is conducting a hunt for heretics, and are finding them everywhere. The Tea Party cry is "Convert or die!" Heretics will be burned at the stake.

But the Tea Party, like Cromwell forcing Anne of Cleves on Henry, is in danger of forcing an unelectable presidential candidate on the Republican Party. By holding the country's economy hostage to their debt-ceiling dogma, the Tea Party's negatives are going up all around, most importantly among independents with a conservative bent.

The evangelicals and Reformationists were a minority in England, and even though they held great power while they enjoyed the king's favor, in the end the traditional bent of the clergy, the people and the nobles won the day, and many of the reforms that Cromwell and his ilk killed for went by the wayside. Since then the Anglican Church has been much more like the Catholic Church than the evangelical and Lutheran churches, and for many years there was talk of reunification (women and gay priests have pretty much ended that).

In the long run the Republican Party is inherently conservative, and will return to the conservative roots it had before the current wave of Tea Party radicalism. Over the last 50 to 80 years Social Security and Medicare and the concepts underlying them have become part of the fabric of American society. They have problems, but Americans want them fixed, not destroyed. The Tea Party was born in opposition to the health care law, even though everyone knows we need some kind of health care reform, and that means some kind of collective responsibility for all Americans' health. Opposition to health care reform is a prelude to the demolition of Medicare and Social Security. The Tea Party's fervent zeal to destroy them will ultimately fail when America's elderly -- the people who vote in the greatest numbers -- finally realize what the Tea Party has in store for them.

It's tempting to assign historical roles to the modern players in the Republican Party. Sarah Palin as Anne Boleyn for seducing John McCain and causing a terrible schism in the Republican Party. Michele Bachmann as Catherine Howard, the crazy bimbo. Karl Rove as Thomas More, for executing Reformationists like Christine O'Donnell. Grover Norquist as Thomas Cromwell, for going after anyone in the old guard who dares cross him and his radical tax-cut theology. And Rick Perry as Henry VIII, for executing more people in Texas than any other governor, including the insane, mentally deficient and children (Henry had a law passed allowing the execution of the insane so that Lady Rochford, who helped Catherine Howard arrange her adulterous liaisons and went mad while imprisoned in the Tower of London, could be beheaded).

In the end, if the Republicans run a Tea-Party turkey and lose to Obama in 2012, the Tea Party will find its head on the executioner's block just like Thomas Cromwell did.