American Political Culture: Consensual

After reading through both the articles and all of the other blog posts I would have to come to the conclusion that the political culture of America is actually more consensual than conflictual. This is the dissenting opinion as so far pretty much everyone else that has posted has said that America was conflictual.
Generally, the reason seems to be that because we have different opinions we are forced to be conflictual rather than consensual. This has been pointed out time and time again through the evidence of the strong stereotypes presented by Brooks and Frank. There is, however, one major flaw with this idea, and that is that when continuing with that logic the most reasonable conclusion to make is that a consensual political culture is impossible essentially because factions(aka different opinions) exist.This is not true.
Our country isn't completely divided. This is demonstrated when Frank writes about the man in the Newsweek article who essentially said that him and his neighbors voted for Bush in the 2001 election because of their dislike of Wall Street. When I hear about opposition to Wall Street I think Democrat, not Republican. I see the Republican party as the party of the self-interested and greedy Koch brothers. This perfect example displays the delusion almost all Americans have with the political parties. We see these parties as enemies when in reality they aren't. They are two sides of the same coin that believes in democracy, capitalism, and personal liberties. The stereotypes, of people in Red states being "American" while those in the Blue states are snobs, are the very reason why the divide appears to exist. This imaginary divide is propelled even more by the fact that we live in a society based on capitalism, which promotes the mentally of "winners and losers" furthering the idea that one side has to be wrong and one has to be right.
We should all remember that when we looked at the Political Compass, Obama and Romney where in the same sector and not that far apart. They come from two different parties. If American political culture was conflictual then there is no way that is even possible. America isn't divided between "Red states" and "Blue states" it is just one people, with generally fairly similar opinions that are deluded into thinking there is a major divide