Yeah its hard to say how we came to this. The founding fathers thought every state would be running a candidate. This consolodation which continues (senators, house members, and even presidents used to look at the office they held in a way that they would break from the party. Its a bit hard to describe but like the house seeing the senate as overstepping with a bill that should be put for by the house because its budget oriented or such). I think they were worried about to much fractioning rather than such lockstep bs we have today. Granted though the rights were to prevent groups in power from oppressing other groups but again we have a situation were one party only cares about us vs them than rights, democracy, rule of law, etc.