Edward Livingston, speaking before the Senate in 1830, had this to say about the cost of political partisanship for partisanship’s sake. Sage words, even 180 years later (bold font mine):

The spirit of which I speak…creates imaginary and magnifies real causes of complaint; arrogates to itself every virtue — denies every merit to its opponents; secretly entertains the worst designs…mounts the pulpit, and, in the name of a God of mercy and peace, preaches discord and vengeance; invokes the worst scourges of Heaven, war, pestilence, and famine, as preferable alternatives to party defeat; blind, vindictive, cruel, remorseless, unprincipled, and at last frantic, it communicates its madness to friends as well as foes; respects nothing, fears nothing.