The last time I looked, there were a whole plethora of political parties. However, I guess we're talking about the two major parties. It hasn't been that long since the talk was about how desirable it is to have diversity within the parties. Well, when you have diversity (as in the "big tent") you have a lot of different opinions. In my book that is not a bad thing; as long as the party in question sticks fairly well to its tenets and holds the Constitution in high regard.
It isn't the Republican Party that has gone off the rails and flat out has no respect for the Constitution, or law; it is the Dumycrat Party that won't even do a little thing like pass a federal budget. It is the Dumycrat Party that wants to ignore the Bill of Rights. And it is the Dumycrat Party that has never met a tax that it didn't like. That's not to say that there aren't squishy Republicans, but compared to the communist inspired Dumycrats, the wayward Republicans are pikers.
The Tea Party needs to put its efforts into reform within the Republican Party and not become a separate "third party." Party politics are never going away and the only thing worse is what you get when there are no dominant parties. To govern effectively, there must be something close to majority consensus--as much as is practically possible anyway. In many countries, the best they can obtain is very loose coalitions that fall apart at the drop of a hat.
Our last election should have been a wake up call to all thinking Americans that we are dangerously close to slipping headlong into the next phase of democracy, which in fact will be nothing like what we have known. That's right, from where we are right now, it's a very short step into virtual communism. As a matter of fact, with a dedicated communist already in place as the executive of our government, it's freaking scary.