If there is a silver lining for Michael Steele in the GOP’s special election loss in upstate New York, it could be that the new head of the Republican National Committee is finally taking more flak from Democrats than fellow Republicans.

Steele’s three-month tenure as the GOP’s first African American chairman has been marked by intraparty sniping, back-biting and hand-wringing, all of which have contributed to raising Steele’s profile beyond heights attained by most of his predecessors.

And at times, Steele has brought unwanted scrutiny on himself by upsetting various corners of the Republican establishment. That was the case when he referred to abortion as an “individual choice” in an interview with GQ — a statement he later sought to clarify after social conservatives took issue with the characterization.

But Republicans showed no interest in playing the blame game in the wake of Democrat Scott Murphy’s razor-thin victory over Republican Jim Tedisco in the New York race where second-term Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand left open the 20th District when she was appointed to fill the Senate spot of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . That left it to the Democrats to pummel Steele.

In a Web video released April 24, “Broken Steele,” the Democratic National Committee used Steele’s own words to portray him as the Republican loser in the wake of the Murphy victory.

“That’s a seat that we should be able to go in and be competitive and win,” Steele says in a television interview featured in the DNC’s video. “I’m going to make it a focal point right out of the box.”

Republicans say Steele was simply speaking the truth — that the GOP will need to win seats like New York’s exurban 20th District to regain a political foothold — and playing the time-honored chairman’s role as the party’s cheerleader.

“At a time when the party is a little bit demoralized, you kind of needed to inject a little bit of optimism,” said a Republican official who watched the race closely but declined to be named.

“We were clearly competitive in this district,” said RNC spokesman Trevor Francis.

Party officials credited Steele with working well with the National Republican Congressional Committee, the New York state GOP and the Tedisco campaign.

Even some of Steele’s critics are giving him breathing room for the moment.

Katon Dawson, the South Carolina Republican chairman who lost to Steele in a six-round election earlier this year, declined to comment on his leadership during the course of the New York race.

But Dawson did critique the “expectation level that was set” in the race, saying Republicans would have been better off not feeding into the notion that Tedisco was the favorite.