I don’t think it’s so much naivete, as I recently noted, as part of a large-scale Republican/conservative effort at “frog boiling”.
Republican/conservative minoritarian politics now depends upon concerted anti-democracy machinations to be able to win elections and block majoritarian governance. The longer they can keep stalling us that this is fine, this is normal, this is business as usual in two-party politics, the more opportunities they have to consolidate their own power before the rest of us call them out on it.