On October 3, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, spoke to a group of Republican donors at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. Unbeknownst to Ayers, his remarks were recorded, and the audio was subsequently obtained by Politico.

Combining the arrogance of D.C. operatives with the bluster of the Trump White House, the young staffer urged the donors to punish elected Republican senators and congressmen who dared call into question parts of Donald Trump’s agenda: “Just imagine the possibilities of what can happen if our entire party unifies behind him? If—and this sounds crass—we can purge the handful of people who continue to work to defeat him.”

Later in the session, Ayers elaborated on how this purge might take place: “If I were you, I would not only stop donating, I would form a coalition of all the other major donors, and just say two things. We’re definitely not giving to you, No. 1. And No. 2, if you don’t have this done by December 31, we’re going out, we’re recruiting opponents, we’re maxing out to their campaigns, and we’re funding super-PACs to defeat all of you.”

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Ayers that members of Congress owe their constituents their best judgment. Nor does it seem to matter that Republican lawmakers have, in fact, voted over 90 percent of the time with the president, often giving the leader of their party more than a little benefit of the doubt.

No. In today’s Washington, it seems normal to assume that party loyalty—understood as loyalty to the president of one’s party—comes first.

It doesn’t. It shouldn’t. Political parties are fine things. Edmund Burke did a service to representative government when he more or less made parties respectable for the first time, in 1770. But four years later, in his “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” Burke famously explained that representatives should not blindly follow the wishes of their constituents. The same argument holds with respect to party:

“Government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide?” Each representative, each member of Congress, is supposed to deliberate and decide, not simply to follow his party’s leadership in Congress or in the White House.

The Constitution envisions equal branches of government. The Federalist Papers expect some degree of moral and intellectual virtue on the part of members of Congress. Neither the Constitution nor the Federalist Papers envision parties. Parties have come to have their place, but that place is limited. Parties have their claims. But party loyalty ought not mean a click of the heels and salute to whatever the president wants.

Which raises the broader question of the future of the president’s party in particular. The GOP is now torn between demagogues who appeal to the lowest-common-denominator concerns of voters and establishment types who roam like zombies on a terrain they can no longer navigate, among citizens for whom they have little in the way of answers.

So what is the future of the Republican party? Who knows? Parties aren’t forever. It would be foolish to assume that citizens who believe in limited and constitutional government, in free markets and in American world leadership, will necessarily find their homes in the GOP. Those citizens may have to look beyond the party they’ve become accustomed to support.

We know that great statesmen have always seen beyond party. Lincoln helped found a new one. Churchill switched parties twice and more than once lamented the absence of a vigorous centrist party distinct from overbearing progressives and unimpressive conservatives. Serious citizens as well have a perspective higher than that of mere party.

This is an unusual moment, as everyone senses. It would be foolish to dismiss the case for independent candidacies or new parties. We are, after all, citizens first, not partisans. John McCain’s 2008 slogan, “Country First,” didn’t prevail in that era’s polarized partisan environment. But McCain would not be the first prophet, denied honor, who turned out to be ahead of his time.