Sen. John McCain wears two hats simultaneously.

The veteran Republican lawmaker is known as an occasional partisan crab. He also is a friend of the “liberal media” who happens to work well with Democrats.

This morning, appearing on “Face the Nation,” McCain was asked about a comment by presumed Democratic presidential campaign front runner Hillary Clinton who called McCain her “favorite Republican.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/07/mccain-on-being-clintons-favorite-republican-191582.html?hp=l5

McCain didn’t return the compliment. He said he’d work with a President Clinton if “regrettably” she gets elected. He wouldn’t take the bait offered by “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer.

Come on, senator.

Everyone who follows politics knows he worked quite well with then-Sen. Clinton when she served in that body from January 2001 until President Obama selected her to become secretary of state in 2009. Political junkies also are well-versed on McCain’s personal friendship with the current secretary of state, John Kerry, another former Democratic senator with whom McCain served. The two men are combat Navy veterans of the Vietnam War and they share that common bond.

McCain, though, has to play the die-hard Republican card because, as many of his GOP brethren have learned, the tea party wing of the GOP simply won’t stand for Republicans reaching across the aisle to their fellow Americans who happen to be Democrats.

I figure McCain will call Hillary Clinton eventually to tell her — in private, of course — that she is his favorite Democrat.