The Republican Party is akin to a headless snake, writhing on the ground devoid of leadership or purpose. Unlike the decapitated serpent, however, the GOP has a chance of recovery. One of the symptoms of their lack of leadership was the House near-rebellion against Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) over fiscal cliff negotiations. Had someone else risen as an option, it is very likely that the coup would have been successful. So what stopped it? God, say Republican officials interviewed by the Washington Post. Apparently, they all independently prayed and decided that Boehner’s position in the House comes from the highest authority in their religion’s universe.

It’s worth noting that the Washington Post piece quotes several Republicans in the House of Representatives that decided to keep their name off the record — showing their level of certainty in the advice divinely provided to them, or that the advice was divine.

Here’s video coverage courtesy of Huffington Post Live, which goes on to discuss Obama’s judge appointments and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to hold a special election:

These two bits of HuffPo’s transcript are brilliant:

At 0:56:

Senior Economy Reporter Zach Carter: “The theology of this is not particularly sophisticated, but I also don’t think people are really mistaking the 2010 freshman class of Republicans as being particularly sophisticated political thinkers either.”

At 1:53:

HuffPost Live’s Josh Zepps: “This is a conversation that I have with my liberal friends and secular friends quite a lot, which is, ‘What do these people even mean when they say that they were inspired by God,’ right? It’s like when George W. Bush says that God gave him the strength to go into Iraq. One hopes that what they mean is they took pause, they thought thoughtfully about it, they spent a quiet night of contemplation, and they came to a conclusion, and they’re just using the word ‘god’ as kind of a proxy for being ponderous. My fear is that they quite literally believe that the creator of the universe saved John Boehner.“

Emphasis mine.

The problem is that Republicans haven’t demonstrated that they have the ability to be ponderous or contemplative, leading to the unfortunate conclusion that some of them, at least, genuinely do believe that the creator of the universes stepped in on Boehner’s behalf — or that they are knowingly and purposefully assigning “divine purpose” to their actions to lend them credibility as well as authority and influence over a highly religious base constituency.

The long and detailed Washington Post article about House Republicans fracturing is definitely worth a read, and can be found here. Here’s an excerpt from the piece explaining the difficulties with cohesion facing House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), including his lack of central authority:

“If you’re for this and they’re against, we’ve got problems,” Rep. Stephen Lee Fincher (R-Tenn.) shouted at Boehner and more than 200 lawmakers present, according to Republicans who attended the closed-door meeting. Sure enough, they had problems. Hours later, Democrats helped Boehner pass the measure over the opposition of more than 60 percent of GOP lawmakers. That vote, to avert the “fiscal cliff,” marked a breaking point for House Republicans, who had disintegrated into squabbling factions, no longer able to agree on — much less execute — some of the most basic government functions. Ever since, Boehner has cautiously tried to steer his party away from that bitter moment, with varying success. A short-term strategy, which conservatives called “the Williamsburg Accord,” emerged from a bruising mid-January retreat. It restored enough unity to permit the House to dodge a government shutdown, badger the Senate into passing its first budget in four years and open investigations of the Obama White House. But beyond those limited efforts, the House has not approved ambitious legislation this year. Lawmakers have instead focused on trying to re-brand the party around kitchen-table issues — although even some of those bills have run into trouble. And the most momentous policy decisions, including an immigration overhaul and a fresh deadline for raising the federal debt limit, have no coherent strategy to consolidate Republicans, much less take on the Democrats.

They go on to report statements by Rep. Steve Southerland II (R-FL), who gave his name for the record, unlike several other congressional interviewees. Apparently, the night before the vote that earned Boehner another term as House Speaker, he had a dream about Saul and David from the Old Testament. For those of you unfamiliar, the story goes pretty much like this:

David was blessed by the prophet Samuel, became the champion of Saul (the King of Israel) by killing Goliath, and went around being a Hollywood-type bad ass after that. For example, when Saul offers him a daughter (the Bible isn’t huge on female supporting characters, so Merob doesn’t play a big part), he refuses out of humility. When another daughter of Saul falls in love with him, Saul convinces David (who is totally worried that he doesn’t make enough to earn her love; it’d be sort of cute if what happens next didn’t happen) that all he needs is 100 of their enemies’ foreskins, because nothing says “I love you” quite like little bits of human genitals in a bag. He brings back 200 and ends up marrying Michal.

Anyway, Saul ends up getting really jealous of how awesome David is, and ends up doing lots of bad things that mostly involve trying to murder David. David gets tipped off by Saul’s son and runs away. Along the way, a high priest helps him, which results in Saul killing the 85 priests in the town of Nob along with every other resident.

Saul keeps chasing David around, and David has repeated chances to kill him but doesn’t. For example, he was hiding in a cave at one point, and Saul entered the cave looking for him. David cut a piece from Saul’s robe instead of attacking him, and later reveals himself and tries to make nice again. They finally reconcile when David sneaks into Saul’s camp at night and sticks a spear in the ground next to him, before stealing Saul’s water jug and own spear. He then displays those to Saul from distance the next day, to show that he was merciful. After that they’re done with each other.

And that story is what Rep. Steve Southerland II (R-FL) dreamed of, as reported by the Washington Post. From this, he pulled that God probably didn’t want him to work to get Boehner out of House leadership.

*Author note: If there are theologians or concerned Christians that want to correct my interpretation and telling of that Bible story, please, feel free. I am not a biblical scholar. However, I approached it as what it is, public domain, and created an artistic adaptation bearing in mind the hundreds, if not thousands, of times the story has likely been edited since the original telling.