Or maybe they just hide their transphobia behind a thin veil of reasonable-sounding, legal arguments.

That’s paranoia, not analysis, also, the CDU is too big to keep such a conspiracy secret. It’d rather look like the AfD’s attempts to not look fascist. Also, they’d be facing opposition from the churches to… capture a sentiment that doesn’t really exist outside of a couple of rabid people noone will tear away from the AfD, anyway? To discriminate against one of the first groups of people the Nazis persecuted?

They will use that topic for diversion in a pinch. It’s mostly meaningless to them, but they’ll happily jump at the chance to play off unemployed stoners against the hard-working middle class.

True, still those topics are a dime a dozen and first they’d have to actually desire a ruckus. Right now is the absolute worst time for that, they want unity and stability to a) face the existing geopolitical threats and b) look better than the traffic light and c) don’t know whether they realise that but to weaken the AfD, which thrives on democratic parties bickering.

Everybody knew, and they must have known that they would only strengthen the Afd if they went all in on “bad foreigners” as the primary campaign topic.

And there was internal opposition! But CDU does as CDU does once Merz was elected leader, not so much because Merkel’s wing would be weak but because the middle wing wanted to balance the scales, the rest of the party kept silent to only moderating slightly. They do that kind of thing all the time, shifting the external perception of the party by putting different people on the front. They might not be deep strategists but they know what strategy is and they have the internal discipline to follow through on it.

Side note did you notice Söder very much emphasising social stuff in the Union faction press conference. Fuck me if in the end it’s the Bavarians causing a resurgence in social housing projects etc, actually combat the core reasons why the AfD surged. Maybe even sell it as a grand “Bismarckian” thing, ignore the AfD, say it’s to keep the icky left in check.