By Scott Wong

In the battle between Washington and the tea party, Washington is winning among the Senate’s Republican freshmen.

Many have hired lobbyists and other D.C. insiders to run their offices. Ten of the 13 GOP freshmen have shunned any formal affiliation to the tea party. And most are quick to follow marching orders from Republican leadership. They rarely speak on the Senate floor, they haven’t been introducing much legislation. And they’ve been quietly loyal on roll call votes.

When called on by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — an establishment Republican if there ever was one — freshmen have jumped at the opportunity to travel overseas, appear with GOP leaders at news conferences and give the official response to President Barack Obama’s weekly radio address.

All this makes them, well, quite senatorial — which is a sharp departure from the anti-establishment, anti-Washington attitude they brought to the campaign trail last year.

“All 47 [Republican] senators are given opportunities for all sorts of things. I’m happy to take advantage of those,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told POLITICO. “Anything I can do to help communicate our message, I will help out.”

Sure, freshman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has stormed onto the scene, co-founding the Senate Tea Party Caucus, opposing McConnell on the PATRIOT Act extension and proposing eye-popping budget cuts that have made even some in his own party wince.

But he’s an outlier among this large crop of Republican freshman. The truth is, few seem much interested in shaking up the GOP establishment.

Unlike Paul, Johnson and fellow GOP freshman Marco Rubio of Florida, who rode the same tea party wave to victory last fall, have yet to speak on the Senate floor or introduce legislation. And neither has shown a desire to make national headlines.

While Johnson addressed the influential, tea-party-friendly Conservative Political Action Conference late last week, his message was in line with the party’s agenda: Reverse the health care law, end regulatory overreach, deal with America’s mounting debt and take on Obama.

“If I could wave a magic wand, I would wipe the entire Obama agenda off the table and start from scratch,” said Johnson, whose speech was bereft of the red meat that marked the 2010 campaign. 

Behind all this seems to be the hand of the ultimate insider — McConnell — who needs only to look down the hallway at the House chamber, where an activist group of 87 Republican freshmen is causing major headaches for House leaders, to see the problems freshmen can cause.

“Clearly, he wants to be more than the ‘party of no,’ especially if he wants to gain the majority in 2012,” said Sarah Binder, a George Washington University political science professor and congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. “So there’s an incentive for McConnell to do everything he can to entrench these members to build up the reputation of the Republican Party and the Senate GOP caucus, to get well known at home and raise money.”

The reality is that despite the rhetoric on which they rode into the Senate, most of these GOP freshmen were already establishment types. Nearly all previously served in elected offices in which legislative success comes from compromising and building consensus — not throwing bombs.

Seven of the Senate GOP freshmen have served in the House, including Indiana’s Dan Coats, who spent 10 years in the Senate and eight years in the House, and Rob Portman of Ohio, President George W. Bush’s budget director. Sen. John Hoeven was governor of North Dakota, while Sen. Marco Rubio was Florida House speaker from 2007 to 2009.

Though it’s not unusual, a handful of freshmen — including three who are new to Washington — turned to D.C. insiders for their chiefs of staff.

Both Rubio and Johnson chose lobbyists from Navigators Global who had served in the George W. Bush administration and on Capitol Hill. Rubio tapped Cesar Conda, who co-founded the D.C.-based Navigators after serving as Vice President Dick Cheney’s top domestic policy adviser. Johnson brought on Don Kent, a former adviser to then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire hired John Easton, a lobbyist with VH Strategies who formerly served as chief of staff to then-Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.).

Meanwhile, Portman turned to Rob Lehman, his chief of staff during Portman’s stints as U.S. trade representative and White House budget director. Lehman most recently was a lobbyist with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey.

The freshman senators won’t have to worry about facing voters until 2016, so they’re a lot more insulated than their tea-party-driven House counterparts, who have to run next year.

“Different people have different styles,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who as National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman helped get the 13 freshmen elected. “Some feel more comfortable coming in and taking the bull by the horns immediately and others — I understand why they want to learn a little bit more about how the institution works, how they can be effective.”

Paul hasn’t exactly followed the gentle seen-and-not-heard freshman senator playbook.

His bill calling for $500 billion in spending cuts this fiscal year would end foreign aid to Israel and other allies, decimate the Education Department budget and trim $50 billion from defense spending, a sacred cow that few in the GOP are willing to slay.

“There aren’t many Republicans who would even consider cutting military spending,” Paul told POLITICO. “That’s the big compromise that has to happen [with] people. That’s where our problem is.”

Paul’s other rookie colleagues are sticking to script.

“With the debt that weve accumulated, it’s not sustainable, it’s harming our economic prosperity and the future of our country,” Ayotte told POLITICO. “The debt that we owe is not a Republican issue; it’s not a Democratic issue; this is an American issue that we need to come together on behalf of our country on.”

Johnson, for his part, doesn’t yet feel the need to stand out.

“I do want to listen and learn before I speak and act,” Johnson said. “You can yak all day long, but I think you need to be a little more judicious in what you say and how often you say it.”

Both Rubio and Johnson don’t have any plans to introduce legislation in the immediate future, and Rubio has declined virtually all national media interviews during his first month in the Senate. Rubio’s representatives repeatedly reminded reporters Friday that the senator was holding low-key events at a naval station and his new regional office in Jacksonville, Fla., a dramatic contrast to a year ago, when Rubio was the keynote speaker at CPAC.

The low-profile approach has paid dividends for some rookie senators, namely, in the form of media exposure, foreign trips and more face time with leadership.

Since the midterm election, Rubio, Johnson, Ayotte and Mark Kirk of Illinois have been tapped by party leaders to give the GOP weekly radio address, though aides say all freshmen will eventually get their turn at the microphone. Johnson and Ayotte have appeared at news conferences with leadership.

And Rubio, Johnson, Ayotte and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania accompanied McConnell on a trip last month to Afghanistan and Pakistan to meet with foreign leaders, U.S. military commanders and troops. Rand Paul and fellow Tea Party Caucus member Mike Lee of Utah weren’t invited.

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