Popular opinion has it that there are only two positions in the culture war. The left supposedly consists solely of young wokes who view America as an evil empire and want to cram deference to racial and sexual minorities down the throats of guilty, privileged white people, while the right is a bunch of fanatical authoritarians who will stop at nothing to repress minorities, uphold outmoded religious values, and protect the ideological and financial interests of the white Christian patriarchy. Those positions clearly do exist, and get a disproportionate amount of attention from the media. They do not, however, represent the majority of Americans.
My guess is that the left-leaning culture warriors are about ten percent of the population, while the right-leaning types make up about twenty percent of Americans. The rest of us embrace traditional values and standard historical interpretations, but do not believe in imposing these ideas by censorship, and firmly reject discrimination against racial and sexual minorities. Most of us will side on a situational basis against the team that appears to be the aggressor. As a result, if the left is trying to indoctrinate our children with CRT, we are against that; but if the right wants to prohibit teaching about slavery, we are against that, as well.
The GOP is doing a better job of selling itself to the center as a collection of culture war victims than the Democrats. Hence, the outcome of yesterday’s elections.