For all the campaign-season talk of witchcraft, “Aqua Buddha,” and “Second Amendment solutions,” the incoming class of Senate Republican freshmen will be stocked with establishment pros — the kind of playmakers who could bolster the GOP bench and give the White House a target-rich environment for deal making.

The likely GOP stars include former Bush budget director and trade chief Rob Portman of Ohio, former House Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven and former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a darling of conservatives who still has a reputation for bridging divides between the right and center in his party.

If Democrats in the White House and Congress hope to accomplish anything in a much more balanced Senate, this savvy set of freshman class Republicans will be pivotal.

“Overall, I think the group of GOP freshman senators who are likely to be elected have the potential to work for bipartisan solutions. I think the White House should reach out very quickly after the election and include them in policy deliberations,” said former Democratic Sen. David Boren, who is president of the University of Oklahoma.

It’s not the conservative bomb throwers like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle — if she unseats Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada — who will most influence the course of critical policy debates but, rather, those who long ago began building reputations and relationships in the halls of power.

“These are folks who are familiar with working in a structure,” Candida Wolff, who ran President George W. Bush’s legislative affairs shop, said of the institutionalists in the new class. “They should be ready sooner in terms of being engaged, and that puts them a step ahead of the others.”

Several sources said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to look to hand responsibility to incoming freshmen who are ready to accept it.

“When you have folks like Portman and Blunt who have been in leadership and understand that being in the Senate is more than obstruction, it makes the Senate a better place,” said Janet Mullins Grissom, a former McConnell chief of staff who lobbies at the bipartisan firm Johnson, Madigan, Peck & Boland.

The list of established political veterans goes on: former Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana, New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and, depending on election outcomes on Nov. 2, as many as four more House hands — former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Reps. John Boozman (R-Ark.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) —- who have experience inside the Beltway.

Indeed, it’s easy to see Portman negotiating on budget and trade matters, Blunt acting as a liaison to his former House colleagues, Hoeven working on issues that affect state budgets and Rubio being a key Republican voice on immigration policy. Coats, who served as the U.S. ambassador under Bush, worked with Democrats such as Vice President Joe Biden and the late Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) on various issues during his decade in the Senate.

“It is in some ways a gift to this administration to have more Republicans, so that they have no choice but to pursue bipartisan legislation,” Grissom said.

McConnell himself, in an interview with POLITICO, recently ticked off some of the names above as a counterpoint when asked how he would manage a diverse caucus that’s likely to include a few conservative bomb-throwers.

Still, there’s no question that the conservative, no-compromise Jim DeMint wing of the Senate Republican Conference will grow, with the South Carolinian having seeded the campaigns of a set of like-minded candidates, including Angle and Mike Lee of Utah — not to mention Rubio and Toomey, both of whom have ties to the establishment and the more rebellious faction.

There’s little doubt that the Senate is changing — massive turnover from this election cycle and the two preceding it have given the body new, hotter-boiling blood — but it remains a club. And those who refuse to negotiate often end up on the fringes of key policy debates. One Republican strategist asserted that the addition of a handful of outsiders bent on bucking the establishment will not greatly alter the chamber because there are already conservatives who are willing to single-handedly halt the gears of the Senate.

“It only takes one objection,” the strategist said. But most of the fresh faces, he said, “are not really what you would view as a caricature of what might be characterized as tea party types.” A White House spokesman declined to comment for this story, citing the need to await the outcome of the election to discuss the constitution of the Senate. But it’s a group, Wolff said, that includes “folks who the White House may want to reach out to and have a dialogue.” But they’re also legislators who won’t be easily wowed by trips to the Oval Office that aren’t really aimed at serious negotiations. Portman’s willingness and ability to work with Democrats as a House member and even in the Bush White House grated on his more conservative House colleagues. But it won him a sterling reputation in some Democratic circles, where he teamed up with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) on pension legislation, created lasting goodwill with members of the Congressional Black Caucus by meeting with them when he ran Bush’s budget office, and forged alliances with New Democrats on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. “When Rob Portman calls, he will get a return telephone call,” civil rights icon and House Democrat John Lewis said in a 2006 interview with CQ. Blunt was in the room when the 2008 financial system bailout was written — and it appears that he will live to tell about it as he hasn’t trailed Democrat Robin Carnahan in a poll since last year. Kirk, who is locked in a tough battle for election to President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, was once a leader of the House’s moderate Republican “Tuesday Group.” “Clearly, these are not bomb-throwing people,” said J. Keith Kennedy, a former Senate Appropriations Committee staff chief who is a managing director at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz. “These are mature folks.” Boren said Obama needs to take seriously the challenge of working across the aisle — both with the new Republican senators and those with greater tenure. “The president needs to spend more one on one time with senior Republican moderates like Dick Lugar [R-Ind.] and others,” Boren said. “Moderates must be included on the front end of the policymaking process and not be asked to simply fine-tune Democratic proposals after they are already drafted.” Read more: LINK`http`www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44342_Page2.html#ixzz13tNsaARM`color: rgb(0, 51, 153);`LINK

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