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As they seek to jolt the economy out of recession, President Obama's Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have set aside worries about future inflation.

But one form of inflation - rhetorical - may become a short-term hazard for Republicans seeking an effective strategy to oppose Mr. Obama's activist-government agenda. As the Democratic Congress returns this week to juggle administration initiatives on energy, health care and financial regulation, the minority party faces an internal debate over striking the right tone.

"Rhetorically, Republicans are having a very hard time finding something that raises the consciousness of the average voter," said Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who recently lost a bid to became national party chairman.

Workaday labels like "big spender" and "liberal" have lost their punch, and last fall, Senator John McCain of Arizona and Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska gained little traction during the presidential campaign by linking Mr. Obama's agenda to socialism.

So Mr. Anuzis has turned to provocation with a purpose. He calls the president's domestic agenda "economic fascism."

"We've so overused the word 'socialism' that it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago," Mr. Anuzis said. "Fascism - everybody still thinks that's a bad thing."

Whether fellow Republicans think that is factually appropriate or strategically wise is another question.

It's Been Tried Before

In modern American politics, linking opponents to totalitarianism typically signals that the side making the link is losing. Yet sometimes it works.

In his come-from-behind 1948 victory, President Harry S. Truman, a Democrat, likened a vote for the Republican challenger, Thomas E. Dewey, to a vote for fascism. Four years later, as a vice-presidential candidate trying to break the Democrats' 20-year grip on the White House, Richard M. Nixon ripped the Democratic nominee for president, Adlai E. Stevenson, as a graduate of the "cowardly college of Communist containment."

Later, his onetime speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan recalled, Nixon "consciously kept the rhetoric cool" - even after the Democratic presidential challenger in 1972, George McGovern, compared him to Hitler. Ronald Reagan, a master of the temperate communication that fit the dominance of broadcast television, preferred humor to vitriol.

But recent years have produced a boom market for harsher rhetoric, for reasons that include the polarization of the two political parties and the rising influence of cable television and the Internet. In 2004, for instance, The American Prospect magazine depicted an elephant's trunk curling around the neck of the Statue of Liberty with the headline: "Stranglehold: The right-wing push for a one-party state."

Addressing President George W. Bush on MSNBC last year, the host Keith Olbermann declared, "You're a fascist."

The epithet, commonly associated with Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, gained new currency among conservatives with the publication of Jonah Goldberg's 2008 book, "Liberal Fascism." This spring, an article in The American Spectator titled "Il Duce, Redux?" called Mr. Obama's goals, language and conception of government "straight out of Mussolini's playbook."

Mr. Anuzis noted that the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck had picked up the theme, as did some participants at the antitax "tea party" rallies last week. Mr. Anuzis spreads the word on Facebook and Twitter.

But that discomfits other conservatives who question its accuracy and political wisdom.

"I don't think the word 'fascism' applies at all," said the CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow, a sharp critic of Mr. Obama's tax and spending policies. "Barack Obama is not a dictator. He's a liberal."

Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, said: "If what you're trying to do is reach out to the middle, the more extreme the language, the less likely they are to pay attention. We sound like white noise in the background. It's like a yipping Chihuahua."

Smile When You Say It

The sharper language partly reflects pent-up frustrations over Mr. Bush, who presided over spending increases and the government's $700 billion financial system bailout last fall. Now Republicans lament much more of the same from Mr. Obama.

"They're trying to figure out how to oppose a relatively popular president during an economic emergency," said Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, dismissing the fascism charge. "That's not an easy thing to do."

The practical question for Republicans is how best to reach political independents, 60 percent of whom now approve of Mr. Obama's job performance. As his policies sink in, said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, "I think 'big-government-liberalism' is good enough."

Mr. Anuzis remains unconvinced. He notes that he does not call Mr. Obama himself a "fascist." Rather, he applies the "economic fascism" label to government tax and regulatory policies that seek, in the words of one magazine's definition he cites, "to achieve the utopian socialist ideal."

"It's politically very incorrect only because we're not used to it," concluded Mr. Anuzis, who recently joined American Solutions for Winning the Future, a group led by Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker. But he acknowledged, "You've got to be careful using the term 'economic fascism' in the right way, so it doesn't come off as extreme."

...achieve the utopian socialist ideal."

Anuzis wrote:"Fascism - everybody still thinks that's a bad thing."