It's why a lot of votes in both houses can seem close, or bipartisan, but in fact they are not - just Congressmen who are owed a favor being allowed to vote in such a way that won't piss off their constituents or hurt their chances of being elected to a higher office someday, or land them a sweet consulting gig after they leave office, or whatever. If the leadership knows they have votes to spare anyway. This is a pretty common and well-known practice I thought, so I don't really understand the downvotes.

I mean, if both Cruz and Paul had voted for cloture and the Senate had moved on cloture with e.g. 61 votes or something (i.e. both their votes actually mattered and were against the party interests), then their votes would be big news and evidence of an actual schism. As it stands, how they voted doesn't mean shit, other than that they are reasonably famous politicians.