Above all, Mr Fini looks to France's Gaullists: a model, he thinks, of how to be right-wing without being fascist or racist.
So does the far right, including the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, which has sympathisers among the police.
But he would be vulnerable to Gianfranco Fini, the foreign minister, who is also deputy prime minister and leader of the second-biggest party on the right, the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance.
ECONOMIST: Italy takes a wobbly step towards two-party politics
The sharp polarization, combined with fear, between left and right that was a legacy of the fascist period of Mussolini from 1917 to 1943, returned first in the form of a huge wave of strikes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then in a deadly form of political violence.
The post-communist leader reckons the post-fascist fellow is now his chief counterpart on the democratic right.
He had successfully fused his own party with that of the formerly neo-fascist Gianfranco Fini to create a single movement of the right, the People of Freedom (PdL).
The recent financial crisis affecting his country has heralded a rise in popularity for the neo-fascist party Golden Dawn, one of Europe's most controversial -- and right-wing -- parties.
Mr Sanader would, however, like to avoid links with another right-wing party that, until recently, glorified Croatia's second world war fascist leaders.
Di Canio wrote in his 2000 autobiography that he was fascinated by Benito Mussolini and, in 2005, celebrated with the far-right "ultras" at Lazio, his former club in Rome, by making a fascist salute.
Meanwhile, Silvio Berlusconi, the tycoon who leads a four-party coalition on the right, including the one-time separatists of the Northern League, the post-fascist National Alliance, his own Forza Italia and a little Christian Democratic offshoot, is grinning.
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