I’m not a fan of political parties, but I really don’t see any reasonable way that they could be prevented short of a lot of new laws and possibly a constitutional amendment limiting our political freedom. And even if we did get rid of them, we’d end up in a similar situation anyway.
Consider, to be part of a party now, one generally has to support the broader aspects of the party’s platform, and the candidate needs the party to help raise funds and get votes from party loyalists. But if we had no party, we’d just have a series of lobbyist organizations. Imagine instead that politicians, in order to get enough organization and funds to run a campaign at any decent sized level, would have to seek out the support of political groups. We have this already, groups like the NRA, ACLU, PETA, etc., and various corporations, giving money to various parties and certain candidates. Really, it wouldn’t be all that different from what it is now, perhaps a little more variation, but now it’s way more complicated for a voter to learn about a candidate. Sure, I think for the informed voter, the one who researches all the candidates, it is probably a benefit, because they’re not so much forced to follow party lines, but a lot of voters out there just vote for the D or the R, at least represent some amount of a consistent platform across their various candidates, but without parties, we’d see a lot of voters just pick a random organization they support and vote for those people instead, and we could end up with a whole random group of congressmen and senators. And, then, with no majority, to pass legislation, we’d end up with all sorts of strange bedfellows. So, in short, we’d still end up the same sort of effect of political parties, but the results would be far more volatile and unpredictible.
Sure, I’d love it politicians would run on what they believed and got support based on that rather than on political interests, and that voters would research and vote for who among those they really thought was best, and then in their jobs those politicians would be writing and voting for legislation based on what is best for everyone. But short of that utopia, which despite it seeming to be what the founders hoped for and is against human nature, it seems like we’re stuck with parties.