WASHINGTON — Giving little credit to newly empowered Democrats, the House Republican leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, will place the blame for an electoral loss in November squarely on his own party’s shoulders in a speech before the Republican National Committee today.

“The Democrats did not win. Republicans lost,” Mr. Boehner plans to tell party members at the outset of the RNC’s winter meeting here, according to excerpts of his remarks obtained by The New York Sun last night.

Mr. Boehner, whose stint as the House majority leader was cut off after less than a year by the Democratic win, will also attribute the defeat to a perception among voters that Republicans “lost our way.”

“Over time, we became less interested in developing new, innovative, conservative solutions to America’s problems,” he will say. “The Republican brand became diluted, and voters went the other way.”

Mr. Boehner is expected to speak for about 20 minutes on the first day of the meeting at the Grand Hyatt, and he will be followed by the outgoing party chairman, Kenneth Mehlman. Both are expected to articulate a vision for how Republicans can win back Congress in 2008. “Let me be clear: I would never have run for this position if I did not think we could retake the majority in two years,” Mr. Boehner plans to say.

At the conference, committee members are expected to elect Senator Martinez of Florida as general chairman and the current party treasurer, Robert “Mike” Duncan of Kentucky, as national chairman. Mr. Duncan would oversee the day-to-day operations of the party.

Mr. Martinez has the support of President Bush and other party leaders, but he is likely to face opposition from at least a bloc of conservative committee members who say his position on immigration — he favors a guest-worker program — is too moderate.

Once their new leadership is in place, the Republicans will have work to do to catch up to their counterparts at the Democratic National Committee. With the RNC in transition since the November election, the DNC has launched a hefty opposition research and communications effort to undercut Republican presidential contenders a year before the primaries even begin.

The DNC has issued frequent diatribes against both GOP frontrunners and long shots, attacking Senator McCain and Mayor Giuliani as well as the lesser-known California congressman, Rep. Duncan Hunter, and Governor Gilmore of Virginia. Democrats criticized Mr. McCain for urging more troops for Iraq, saying it was a political ploy to win the GOP nomination “at all costs.” They decried Mr. Giuliani’s support of a troop increase as an attempt to “pander to the far right” while they were equally harsh on Mr. Gilmore for initially not taking a position on Iraq. As for Governor Romney of Massachusetts, the DNC has labeled him “smooth-talking Mitt.”

A party spokeswoman, Stacie Paxton, said that despite their gains in 2006, Democrats had a lot of work to do for 2008, and “part of that work is to hold the Republicans accountable for their records.”

She also took aim at Mr. Boehner’s characterization of the midterm Democratic victory, saying the party won because it “offered America a new direction that put the needs of the country first.”