What is the differences between the heresies and anti-Catholic movements prior to the Protestant Reformation (ie:Waldensians, and other heresies before that time) and the Protestant Reformation itself?  Was it just scale? Political?

There were many factors that made a cuмulative difference, but to me one that tipped the scales is that the Lutheran heretics attacked with great malice and in many polemics the doctrine and practice of celibacy (another stark contrast with the gentle St.Francis), something which ultimately proved unthinkably profitable to selfish princes. Thus, the powers-that-were favored and sheltered the Protestant heretics.

Those who attacked Catholic doctrine, as, for instance, in the matters of celibacy in the monastic orders . . . opened the door for the seizure of the enormous clerical endowments . . . by the Princes . . .

[he property of convents and monasteries passed wholesale to the looters over great areas of Christendom: Scandinavia, the British Isles, the Northern Netherlands, much of the Germanies and many of the
Swiss Cantons.

The endowments of hospitals, colleges, schools, guilds, were largely though not wholly seized . . . Such an economic change in so short a time our civilization had never seen . . . The new adventurers and the older gentry who had so suddenly enriched themselves, saw, in the return of Catholicism, peril to their immense new fortunes.

And in a few short decades, almost all that St.Boniface had won for the Church in Germany, that St.Augustine of Canterbury had in England, that St.Patrick had in Ireland and the like could well have been irretrievably lost.

R.H. Malden, a Protestant wrote,

The anti-Protestant movement in the Roman Church which is generally called the Counter-Reformation, is really at least as remarkable as the Reformation itself. Probably it would be no exaggeration to call it the most remarkable single episode that has ever occurred in the history of the Christian Church. Its immediate success was greater than that of the Protestant movement, and its permanent results are fully as large at the present day. It called forth a burst ofmissionary enthusiasm such as has not been seen since the first day of Pentecost.

So far as organization is concerned, there can be no question that the mantle of the men who made the Roman Empire has fallen upon the Roman Church; and it has never given more striking proof of its vitality and power than it did at this time, immediately after a large portion of Europe had been torn from its grasp. Printing-presses poured forth literature not only to meet the controversial needs of the moment but also admirable editions of the early Fathers to whom the Reformed Churches appealed — sometimes with more confidence than knowledge. Armies of devoted missionaries were scientifically marshalled. Regions of Europe which had seemed to be lost for ever were recovered to the Papacy, and the claims of the Vicar of Christ were carried far and wide through countries where they had never been heard before"

The idea that the "Reformation" brought light to the world is one of the most ridiculous lies ever contrived. Everywhere Protestantism prevailed, there was only despair at first. If later these countries prospered, it was the delayed result of what the Church had already built up in these lands, and the fact that these countries frequently consorted amongst themselves, against a now relatively weakened Catholicism.

Will Durant comments on this travesty,

Your emphasis on faith as against works was ruinous . . . for a hundred years charity almost died in the centers of your victory . . . You destroyed nearly all the schools we had established, and you weakened to the verge of death the universities that the Church had created and developed. Your own leaders admit that your disruption of the faith led to a dangerous deterioration of morals both in Germany and England. You let loose a chaos of individualism in morals, philosophy, industry, and government. You took all the joy and beauty out of religion . . . you condemned the masses of mankind to damnation as 'reprobates,' and consoled an insolent few with the pride of 'election' and salvation. You stifled the growth of art, and wherever you triumphed classical studies withered. You expropriated Church property to give it to the state and the rich, but you left the poor poorer than before, and added contempt to misery . . . You rejected the papacy only to exalt the state: you gave to selfish princes the right to determine the religion of their subjects . . . You divided nation against nation, and many a nation and city against itself; you wrecked the international moral checks on national powers, and created a chaos of warring national states . . . You claimed the right of private judgment, but you denied it to others as soon as you could . . . Every man becomes a pope, and judges the doctrines of religion before he is old enough to comprehend the functions of religion in society and morals . . . A kind of disintegrative mania, unhindered by any . . . authority, throws your followers into such absurd and violent disputes that men begin to doubt all religion, and Christianity itself would be dissolved . . . were it not that the Church stands firm amid all the fluctuations of opinion and argument . . . the one fold that can preserve religion.