He got just enough votes from Republicans to make try and make it look like their is not one party in in the United State Senate with just a few exceptions. McCain is a Democrat and no one can tell me he is not playing for the other side.
McCain was probably his biggest cheerleader.
“..................Paul spokeswoman Moira Bagley told Yahoo News. “As he has said before, the president should be entitled to some leeway on his political appointments. That is why Sen. Paul voted in favor of Sen. John Kerry, with whom he largely disagrees on foreign policy, to serve as secretary of state.........”
“The Senate voted 58-41 to confirm Hagel, ending a long and contentious nomination process. The other Republicans who supported Hagel were Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Mike Johanns of Nebraska and Richard Shelby of Alabama.”
There is lots to support your assertion, though another interpretation might be that the two parties have been cooperating for decades to support the assuption by most that the public has but two voices; sometimes one side prevails and sometimes the other.
After McCain's run in 2000 he was attacked by Democrats for lacking constitutional eligibility. He was defended by a Chicago law firm active on Obama’s campaign committee. When law suits were inconclusive, John Conyers two attempts to get an amendment to the Constitution in 2004 and 2005 failed, and amendment that would have made both McCain and Obama natural born citizens, and Congress couldn't resolve eligibility in his, McCain's, favor Obama and has campaign chair, Clare McCakill authored a bill in the Senate, SB 2678, in Feb 2008, the ‘‘Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act’’. Were McCain eligible the bill wouild have been redundant, and moot. It wasn't redundant, but failed to pass.
When SB 2678 failed, McCaskill, Clinton, Obama, Webb and Coburn and Pat Leahy filed Senate Resolution 511, again to support a claim of eligibility for McCain, though a resolution has no legal authority. It said, in effect, that because McCain's parents were citizens, it didn't matter that the Canal Zone was unincorporated territory in 1936. Legally, the 100% support for SR 511 was no surprise. They all agreed with Judge Michael Chertoff who said “My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied, and Obama concurred!
They needed McCain to run interference. With questions about his eligibility stifling any eligibility questions from the Republicans, Obama’s not have been born to citizen parents would never be raised. McCain was fully aware of questions about his status, and provided a birth certificate showing that he was born in Colon Hospital - definintely not sovereign territory. Whether the Colon birth certificate was legitimate, the Canal Zone was not sovereign US territory until 1937 when Congress acted to incorporate The Zone.
McCain's McCain-Feingold bill threw power to the media, already almost entirely liberal. We can't read his mind, but his actions got Obama elected, with the protection of the media that deployed the Alinsky rules to silence honest questions about the law. Progressives deployed masterful misdirection, for example by ridiculing “Birthers” with “Because natural born citizenship was not defined in The Constitution...” implying that therefore the "living Constitution" definition let them designate Obama, born British, a "natural born citizen", even when he himself was careful not to make that claim; he said "I am a native-born citizen of the US", which is the definition for a 14th Amendment citizen, whose parents, like those of slaves in 1866, were not citizens. Slaves were made naturalized citizens, native-born in the US, but not natural born citizen.
Few in our low-information society, apparently including Michael Chertoff, knew that there are not definitions of terms in the Constitution. The definition was cited as dictum in twenty five or so supreme Court cases, and as precedence in Minor v. Happersett, and has never been amended or reinterpreted, "born on our soil to parents who were its citizens."
Madison, among many of our framers, explained that the omission was deliberate. Time changes the meanings of words. The Constitution was built upon Natural Law, eternal law; for the document to retain eternal meaning the definitions must be construed from the language and law familiar to its framers.
McCain is more likely an example of a politician for whom there is no political doctrine, except perhaps self interest. Chuck Hagel is another “Republican” whose beliefs appear closer to those of the progressives than conservatives, which neither McCain nor Hagel represent. Unless someone talks we will never know whether McCain's actions were coerced (Keating Five anyone?) or whether he really is that much closer to George Soros than Sarah Palin. We do know that he does not honor, defend or protect the Constitution, as he has sworn to do many times as a Naval Officer and Congressman.
Sarah Palin will try to tell you that.