federal reverse

The question was what Signal would do though …

I wrote neither book. Much like you probably had nothing to do with (random American things, think!) either of the following: the movie Clerks, the works of Hunter S Thompson, or the Liberty Bell.

And their opposition to the law wasn’t transphobic (in the strict sense) in the first place but regarded abuse potential,

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

and marijuana legalization for instance

They won’t.

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.

Also they’d fail before the constitutional court as outlawing it back then was not scrutinised by the same standards the constitutional court would apply now.

That’s genuinely somehing for a judge to decide. And it’s usually years before unconstitutional laws are revoked.

[xenophoobic rhetoric] Merz picked that up in a (stupid) attempt to get AfD votes.

Merz is also, genuinely, a bigot. In all possible respects: toward women, toward foreigners, toward gender and sexual minorities, towards non-Christians, …

And there are also all manner of attempts to divide non-Germans within Germany, one of these is:

• Good: “we paid for this person to come here and take care of that elderly lady”.
• Bad: “this person is now caring for an elderly lady, but they’re worthless because they came as a refugee originally, they need to go”

Don’t forget that all the rhetoric of the past 3 months, from the right-wing parties in particular, but also from SPD, and even the Greens with their “deportations to Afghanistan and Syria, sure, but only to a rational degree” ideas have already spooked people living here. We’re also bound to see right-wing attacks rise further.

Merz and CxU are also not paragons of rationality. 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. Really, 100% predictable. But they did. They used a terror attack to start the discussion and executed just as Merz had wanted to for 20 years, in fact. And they indeed lost 4.5% since the polls in November and the election last weekend, much of it to Afd. Primo job!

The CDU is captured by lobby interests and the lobby wants immigrant workers. Loudly. Vocally.

One of the interests of that lobby is actually undercutting pay those employees. That’s significantly easier when your employees don’t know about their rights, when they’re not working legally, etc.

You mentioned SMEs. SMEs are not that important to CxU, even less to Merz. But they look good as figureheads, so they get some breadcrumbs, and lots of mentions in speeches. And they’re told to grow.