That is not what the current administration is doing though. They want a transactional relationship with the world and they want it up be one sided on their terms.
Yes, but they aren't half the country. They are just the current administration.
All following figures approximate.
Party affiliation is approximately 45% for each (including leaners), leaving 10% unaffiliated (
Pew).
Registration is 190 million - 37 million affiliated Republican and 44 million Democratic (
from here).
The Democratic party is following the lead of what I estimate to be the left-most 1/4 to 1/3 of the party. I figure that during the Biden administration the agenda was mostly being set by a vocal active minority amounting to perhaps 1/12 to as little as 1/16 of registered voters.
The Republicans are mostly following the nat-cons. I estimate their fraction of total conservatives to be even smaller than 1/4, based on observing that there aren't very many senators or members closely aligned so much as going along with the Trump political agenda.
Either way, the US is being yanked between two extremes at the behest of what are very small minorities. I haven't thought about the Democratic problem enough to characterize it, but in the case of Republicans it's because Trump showed up as the first guy to look like he wouldn't just roll over for every dirty thing Republicans believe Democrats do.
On any particular issue, there is usually plenty of conservative dissent against Trump, but it is rarely pan-conservative - some approve, some disapprove.
The idea that there's some large MAGA constituency for everything Trump does is mistaken. It's not large, but it is vocal and activist (like the Democratic leftmost minority), and the Trump-opposed media have an obvious interest in making it look larger and more threatening than it is.
The key animating feature of MAGA is "again" - conservative who believe things were better, then got worse, and are somehow getting better again.
