He has evidently learned lessons the missteps of another once promising political movement, the anti-copyright, pro-Internet freedom Pirate Party. Last year, that party, which had enjoyed some impressive successes in local elections, was engulfed in string of highly controversial outbreaks of alleged anti-Semitism. A Pirate Party candidate seeking a position on the national board called for criminal penalties in Germany to be lifted against Holocaust denial. He was not elected. Dietmar Moews, who sought to be a Pirate Party federal candidate, criticized "world Jewry" and caused a large section of his fellow members at the national meeting to boo him and walk out of the party's conference.
In contrast to the high-tech, web-savvy members of the Pirates, however, the AfD is a bit more wonky. There's at least 30 "Professor Doctor" abbreviations on the party's homepage -- teachers of economics, engineers, and finance. But the AfD does mirror the the Pirates in another key way. Both parties are largely defined by a one-issue electoral agenda and are not terribly concerned about foreign policy matters beyond Europe.
To the degree that the AfD expresses positions on non-euro issues, they tend to be vaguely socially conservative. The AfD bemoans that "Germany has too few children" and calls for the Federal Republic to become "children and family friendly," a strain of American-style conservatism that has led some journalists to label the group the "German Tea Party."
It is unclear if the AfD will surpass the required 5 percent voter hurdle in September to enter the Bundestag. A late April Forsa poll showed only 2 percent projected voter turnout for the party. The head of the polling institute Forsa, Manfred Güllner, told Stern magazine that the AfD would not endanger Merkel's governing coalition, which has brought together the CDU and its sister party, the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union, as well as the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP). But let's remember: this party's only been around for a couple months. And in this electoral climate, anything's possible.
Nonetheless, the traditional powerful parties in the Bundestag -- the Social Democrats (SPD) and the CDU -- are filled with some level of anxiety about the rise of this new protest party. In a detailed report in the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in late April, the paper's Berlin-based political correspondent Majid Sattar revealed that the two major parties had conducted opposition research to blunt the growth and attraction of the AfD. Meanwhile, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) -- a think tank affiliated with MerkeI's CDU party -- issued a study arguing that the AfD should be taken seriously but should not be "upgraded through ongoing public debates."
Chancellor Merkel won't probably lose that much sleep over the AfD. Germany's unemployment rate hasn't been this low since 1990. Her poll ratings continue to remain solid and she's on track to win a third term. According to an April ZDF poll, Merkel leads her social democratic opponent and main challenger Peer Steinbrück by a 36 percent margin.
And if she prevails on Sept. 22, she'll become the longest serving female head of state in Europe since the late Margaret Thatcher. The AfD might not be able to stop the new Iron Lady but if she intends to govern, she can't really ignore the strain of public sentiment they represent.
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