Tom Cox looks at the Oregon Republican party and he sees problems. But he also sees hope.

The former libertarian gubernatorial candidate turned Republican volunteer watched the Oregon GOP struggle to find good candidates in the lead-up to the election, and then pay the price by losing every statewide contest, as well as five seats in the Oregon State House. Cox was complimentary of U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, but he was troubled that the party was late to get in the game in certain statewide races, without even getting involved in others.

“I view it as a failure of the party if we can’t find good candidates in statewide seats,” Cox said, referring to the late addition of a Republican to the State Treasurer ticket, and the lack of any Republican candidate in the attorney general race. “What kind of self-respecting political party is that?”

Cox said that scandals and cronyism within the Republican Party at the national level trickled down to affect statewide Republicans who could no longer rely on the party’s message of free markets and limited government. When they were robbed of their message, they were robbed of their chance to explain to voters why they should be elected.

“Republicans haven’t been loudly proclaiming what’s wrong and why,” Cox said, pointing out that U.S. Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) had been one of the biggest opponents of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when he first ran for office in 2002, but he still was defeated handily this year. “If Republicans cannot clearly defend what we think is the right way to manage the crisis, whose fault is that?

Scandals at the top didn’t help Republicans either.

“Right now, we’re losers,” Cox said. “We haven’t lost, we’re just having a bad couple of years. We behaved ourselves into a hole, and we need to behave ourselves out of it.”

To do that, Cox said, Republicans need to get back to basics. If the party can set a clear goal, get feedback on their progress, and find good candidates that can take on the challenges of campaigning and being a good officeholder, the party could find itself back on track.

“We’re going to have to do some sense-making,” Cox said. “Until you figure out what’s going on, you can’t figure out what you’re going to do.”

In the meantime, Cox said he has been on the lookout for future Republican candidates for office. Cox said the Oregon Republican Party had a good network of county chairs established to help start rebuilding the party at the ground level. With more earnest candidate recruitment, he says, the Oregon GOP can get more candidates and better candidates started in politics. They can learn, and eventually move on to be viable statewide candidates that would give Democrats a run for their money. But, he says, being a good politician is about more than deciding to run for something.

“I don’t want people who want to run for office,” he said. “I want people that will be good officeholders. A lot of people don’t run because they’ve never been asked.”

He acknowledged it was going to be a struggle, and he was unsure if the party would be able to complete that process by the 2010 election. But Republicans are down, not out, he said. When Cox switched to the Republican Party in 2005, he told the Oregonian he did so because “the Oregon GOP has a very big tent indeed.” He still believes the Oregon GOP allows for more diversity of views than its Democratic counterpart, and if it can find a way to be welcoming of those views, it will be able to move forward.