"In fairness to Steele, I can't imagine a worse time to be chairman of the RNC. But he's only made the situation worse for himself," said Philip Klinkner, a Hamilton College political scientist who is a specialist on national party committees. "Steele's just done a bad job, no matter what standard you want to hold him to."
Aides say Steele is getting an enthusiastic reception from rank-and-file Republicans at appearances around the country.
"Chairmen and political parties are measured by the totalities of their successes or shortcomings, and we know that this is a two-year term," said Trevor Francis, the RNC communications director.
Even his detractors say Steele's job is not in danger and that he'll be regarded as a success if the RNC helps Republican candidates win elections this fall for governor of Virginia and New Jersey and in 2010 for the House and Senate.
At the moment, though, Republican insiders are increasingly impatient. Steele has been far too slow, they say, to put his team in place at party headquarters in Washington. And the failure to muster a coordinated response to Obama and the Democrats has so far helped give the opposition a free ride.
Fundraising, perhaps the RNC's most important responsibility, has been stable. But Steele, who lacks a national money-raising network of his own, has yet to name a finance chairman, and that worries prominent Republican funders.
"If he stays on his current trajectory, without a finance chairman, I think he'll have trouble raising money," said Wayne Berman, a Washington lobbyist and Republican fundraising veteran.
Internally, RNC members are still squabbling, months after putting outsider Steele in charge. Veterans of both major parties say they can't remember a time when a national committee was in such disarray after choosing a new chairman.
Steele's inability, or unwillingness, to patch things up with the old establishment has become, at the very least, a distraction and an embarrassment, and poses a continuing test of his leadership ability.
"There seems to be a feeling that if you didn't vote for him, you're an archenemy," said David A. Norcross, a longtime committeeman from New Jersey and former RNC general counsel. Norcross, who backed another candidate for chairman, was among those who made Steele agree to constraints on RNC spending after the party's longtime comptroller was let go along with the rest of the senior staff.
