The term “socialism” increasingly being accepted by many Americans and not having any punch as a line of political attack…

… We move on to “Fascism”.

“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.”

This man, this man who would be the RNC Chairman but lost the vote to Michael Steele, may want to be careful.  The Republicans’ use of the word “Socialism” as a slur against something that strictly speaking ain’t socialism has, polls show, turned Americans toward “Socialism”, of some stripe or other.  If they move on to “Fascism”, it stands to reason, Americans will cease to think of that as a bad thing.  That’s not something I much want to see happen.

Of course, this is Fascism with carefully marked clarifications.:

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.”

Seeing that nobody is attempting to “achieve the utopian socialist ideal”, I guess that makes Obama not a Fascist, by Anizus’s definition.  The problem comes in with that strange belief that changing the regulatory process to affect a better outcome or a better process seems to be inflated in Anizus’s mind to “Utopia”.  Utopia always seems to be defined downward.

I’ve referred to Dick Cheney as Fascist from time to time, and probably will in the future.  It’s an item of invective, and Dick Durbin explained why I’ll toss it out as an item of invective a few years’ back.  Time will tell if Anizus can stick to his “Economic Fascism”.  I suggest he drop it.  Go back to “Socialism”, or some blur around with liberal and big – spending.   Eventually it’ll become invective-working again.

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