This is a hangover from the old days when mounts didn’t have motors on the dec axis and all you could do to track the sun and the moon was to change the RA axis drive rate to match their average eastward drift rate. Most mounts now have the ability to move in both axes and if you control them via software using, say, ASCOM or INDI, you should find that you can program offset rates based on the true ephemeris or, at least, some calculated offset rate. As Dominic says, there is usually some backlash in the gear system so that reversing direction is problematic but that is only really important for guiding, not in this case where any significant tracking offset is always in one direction.
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