The Founders didn't mention political parties when they wrote the Constitution, and George Washington in essence warned us against them in his Farewell Address.

Major political parties have a role, but they are incapable of initiating fundamental change because they are fundamentally tied to the status quo. They are the status quo.

The political parties have lost their loyalties.

Here you would know, and enjoy, what prosperity will way of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.

America has furnished to the world the character of Washington! And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.

Washington--a fixed star in the firmament of great names, shining without twinkling or obscuration, with clear, beneficent light.