House Minority Leader John A. Boehner delivered a campaign pep talk to his troops Wednesday and vowed to join Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, in stressing pocketbook issues such as soaring gasoline prices in the coming months.

“The 2008 electoral battle is a battle Republicans can win. America is a center-right country, and middle class families and small businesses have no interest in Democrats’ agenda of higher taxes, ever higher gas prices, more wasteful spending, government-run health care that will drive up costs, and weak national security,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “And with John McCain squaring off against a polarizing liberal candidate, the playing field for House Republicans expands — as does the audience for our message of freedom and security.”

Republicans face a daunting challenge in their bid to recapture the congressional majority they lost in 2006. The GOP will be defending 26 open seats, compared with eight for the Democrats.

Participants in the closed-door party caucus meeting at the Capitol Hill Club said Boehner laid out an electoral strategy rooted in domestic issues and handed out a bumper sticker with the image of a gasoline pump and an attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “America Can’t Afford the Pelo$i Premium,” the red bumper sticker read.

The campaign emblem was produced by the Freedom Project, Boehner’s leadership political action committee. Republicans refer to the increase of more than $1 per gallon in the price of gasoline since the start of the 110th Congress as the “Pelosi premium” and attack the new Democratic majority for not moving more incentives to encourage domestic oil and gas drilling.

Democrats blame the price increase on the inaction of President Bush, such as his continued refusal to suspend oil deposits in the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

In a press conference after the caucus meeting, Republicans said they believed the strategy of emphasizing gas prices, potential tax increases and other pocketbook issues would bolster their party’s chances to recapture seats they once held.

“We’re fighting this battle on ground that we’ve had,” said Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo. “We’ve had more enough seats . . . in districts that John McCain will carry, and carry handily, to take the House back. “

Adam H. Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House GOP Conference, said the Republican strategy would also emphasize efforts to “fix a broken Washington” and take advantage of the contentious presidential primary contest between Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.