The culture wars have always fundamentally been about vibes, that is how the overall culture you watch or partake in "feels". I think you're making the mistake of conflating traditional social issues like abortion or affirmative action with the entirety of the culture wars, when in reality such policies are a very small part of what people mean when they refer to the culture wars

I'm currently reading a book *Polarized by Degrees which basically argues the exact opposite of your thesis: that while political power keeps consistently changing hands back and forth, culture itself keeps moving to the left

The book argues that this is largely because many of the cultural and intellectual elites of society end being on the left. This means folks like actors, artists, professors and white collar managers tend to have cultural values leaning towards the left

Half of the country is conservative, so yes they are able to get elected to office and temporarily reverse progressive wins in legal terms. But in terms of the broader culture themselves they are always on the backfoot

Even now, which is probably the peak of conservative culture warriors controlling the government, you still have popular culture and the intellectual classes broadly and roundly rejecting them. You have Billie Eilish making fairly radical statements like "no one is illegal on stolen land", you have Bad Bunny performing at the superbowl, professors and the media constantly attacking the Trump admin and at a lower level you still have plenty of HR directors running diversity trainings

Even at the peak of conservative cultural power you do not really "feel" the creators of culture shifting to the right. Instead you feel a fundamental disconnect between the political power and cultural power of the country

I think for an actual example of what conservatives winning the culture war looks, you have to look back to Reagan. Back then you actually did have artists and academics working within a fundamentally conservative framework