National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Cole held a rare conference call with reporters and conservative bloggers today, just hours after a Republican-held Congressional seat fell into Democratic hands, the third such instance in three months and the second in under two weeks. In that election, Democrat Travis Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis to capture the seat once held by Senator Roger Wicker, a seat that has not been in Democratic hands since 1994.

As in his statement after the defeat last night, Cole was honest about his party's struggles. "When you lose 3 of these in a row, obviously you have to get beyond campaign tactics and you have to take a long hard look. Is there something wrong with your product?" he asked.

Still, in the wake of some GOP calls for a staff shakeup at the NRCC, Cole said he would resist the pressure. "I think it would be a great mistake to think that this is a question of tweaking a few things here or there or staff changes," he said. "What we've got right now is a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence from the American people."

"That's something we need to be honest with ourselves about, look in the mirror about," he said. But, he pledged, "We continue to have offensive opportunities based on both individual issues that involve candidates and their voting records" and what he described as a do-nothing Democratic Congress.

Cole repeatedly maintained that the two Democrats who have won seats this month -- Don Cazayoux in Louisiana and Childers in Mississippi -- won by following a fundamentally Republican playbook. Nationalizing the elections, though, and associating Cazayoux and Childers with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama can still work, he said.

The NRCC spent more than $1.7 million trying to tie Cazayoux and Childers to national and more liberal Democrats, though unsuccessfully. "I think that's still, you know, a useful tool. Do I think that's a substitute for a substantive agenda? No," he admitted. But nationalizing the election seems to be the path to which Cole is committed, raising the specter of repairing the Republican brand by November. "What we have to do is look in the mirror a little bit and say, 'How have we lost our way?'"