With four days to election day, German opposition leader Angela Merkel struggled Wednesday to snuff out a threat to her authority within her conservative alliance and to get her creaking campaign back on track against a resurgent Gerhard Schroeder.
The woman who would be Germany's first female chancellor told reporters she had no plans to jettison her controversial shadow finance minister, Paul Kirchhof, who has become a useful target for Schroeder's Social Democrats.
Although polls show she still has an excellent chance of unseating Schroeder in Sunday's vote, Merkel is fighting to salvage the once commanding lead for her favoured coalition of her own Christian Democrats (CDU) and the liberal Free Democrats which has vaporised in recent days.
Merkel was also forced to control the political damage from a tacit attack from rivals within her own ranks who said she should toss Kirchhof overboard in favour of an old political nemesis, Friedrich Merz.
In a campaign dominated by the economy and tax policies, Schroeder has succeeded in scaring undecided voters away from the Christian Democrats by homing in on Kirchhof's proposal for a 25 percent flat tax rate which the Social Democrats (SPD) argue is skewed for the rich.
After huddling with her hand-picked panel of advisers including Kirchhof, Merkel told reporters that Merz was welcome to help her campaign but said she still backed Kirchhof as her choice for finance minister.
"Given the state the country is in, we need everyone we can get," she said. "But what I said about Paul Kirchhof stands."
Meanwhile Kirchhof, who has admitted being shocked by the personal attacks directed against him since entering the political arena, welcomed the idea of cooperating with Merz.
"Working in tandem would be ideal," he said.
But Merkel insisted that Merz, a former CDU parliamentary group leader who resigned from his party posts last year in a leadership struggle with Merkel, would not have the upper hand in such a partnership.
A poll released Wednesday showed the Christian Democrats' support holding steady at 41.7 percent but gave the SPD a five-point jump on last month to 32.9 percent, confirming that Schroeder has made a lasting dent in his challenger's once double-digit lead.
The Allensbach institute poll for the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung indicated that Merkel's chosen coalition with the liberals would score 48.7 percent - barely enough for a ruling coalition.
The most likely alternative would be a grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats with Merkel as chancellor. But she stressed her opposition to such an alliance at Wednesday's press conference.
"The SPD is a sharply divided party that is not capable of making reforms," she said, referring to Schroeder's deliberate ploy of losing a parliamentary confidence vote in July to pave the way for the new election.
"There is no reason that a re-elected SPD parliamentary group would be able to implement new reforms. They may be willing to be in the government but they are not able." Merkel has insisted that only her chosen coalition could bring a fresh start and reduce the country's chronically high unemployment rate of 11.4 percent.