Our founding fathers were not naïve, but they entertained a skeptical view of the nature of man as a political creature. So they set up a system which anticipated unceasing tension. Although they deplored political parties, they made them virtually inevitable if society was to govern in a system in which the founders had placed so many obstacles to effective government. Political parties are designed to undo what the founders did, to bridge the gaps created by the founders as checks and balances. So, for longer than two centuries our society has been at eternal war with itself, always risking totalitarian government (such as today under Obama) by strong political parties on the one hand or risking ineffectual government such as we saw under The Articles Confederation or under the Southern Confederacy on the other hand.
Governing is about exercising power. Political parties are about appropriating that power to one's own purpose. The founding fathers created a government containing many checks and balances in an effort to frustrate human tendency to consolidate power in one tyrant or, on the other hand, to concede power to the mob. Political parties in America are designed to overcome the checks and balances put by the framers into the Constitution.
The peculiar architecture of the American federal system with its bicameral legislatures, tripartite "coequal" branches of government, staggered elections for various branches, Constitutional limitations of government power especially freedom of the press and speech, are designed to make government impotent in the absence of a general consensus. The purpose of political parties is to provide that consensus for its constituents' point of view, to provide a consensus about how power should be wielded across the various competing entities of government.
The peculiar architecture of the American federal political system with its checks and balances means that it functions properly as a two-party system. Any successful attempt to form a third political party invariably condemns the political party from which it shoots off and to which it is most closely ideologically aligned to oblivion. Since it is human nature to entertain incessant arguments over the proper application of political power, political parties in America have developed a survival mechanism, they co-opt the principle grievances of the splinter group and make the dissidents' platform their own. This has been the history of political parties in America since the beginning. When a new ideology becomes popular, one party or the other seeks to absorb it.
If the party misjudges the public mood and embraces a splinter ideology in an effort to co-opt when that ideology is too radical to be palatable to the general public, the party loses the next election because it moves out of the mainstream. If the party misjudges the other way and declines to co-opt a movement which happens to be of sufficient strength, the party loses the next election because it has fractured its base. If a party attempts to absorb views of the other party, or approaching that of the other party, it risks losing the next election by alienating its own base. If it fails to absorb views approaching the ideology of the other party, it risks losing the next election by isolating itself to its own base.
Political parties are eternally faced with the same dilemma: should the party dilute its core message to attract less ideologically motivated voters or should it confine itself to a pure message and energize its core constituents? In attempting to solve these tensions, political parties are like amoebas or yeasts, everlastingly dividing or growing.
