Maybe you haven't noticed, but ideas developed and promulgated by CRT scholars are in fact finding their way into public dialog, Democratic talking points, and school curricula. While not exactly CRT, this is also far from what Pluralus described.

Have you, for instance, seen Oregon's recommendations for ethnic studies for grade school? It's strongly identitarian, fairly heavily focused on oppression, and fairly heavily focused on historical and contemporary use of systemic power to enable whites. You can't have this kind of stuff floating around unchallenged by Democrats and then complain that the Republicans are completely manufacturing the hype. Of course they are manufacturing some of the hype. The Republican party machine is amazing at hammering home any little point, real or fantasy, that plays well with who they think their voters will be. But the underlying core of the truth will be enough to split off moderate voters, as evidenced in the Virginia election.

Anyway, it's not exactly CRT, but there's something CRT-derived afoot, and if the moderate Democrats aren't there to say, "Whoa, hold up, let's at least talk about this and make sure it's right", then the Republicans are free to label it according to their whims (they already did: they called it Critical Race Theory, and the label stuck) and claim that all Democrats are totally on board with even the most fringe ideas without Democrats having anything to point to to counter that (which is especially bad for Democrats, since they're less likely to go for the endless-repetition-equals-truth thing).

The changes may or may not be bad (some are certainly needed), but the way it's happening feels like pulling a fast one on the voters because it actually is pulling a fast one on the voters, and when they are alerted to it, they won't like that it's happening that way. Virginia is a perfect example.