As someone who has been a "contractor who ignores all the political bullshit", my personal observation is that it is the contractors who are actually good at navigating the political bullshit (win friends and influence people and all that jazz) tend to be the ones who get top dollar and have continuous employment. Whereas the contractors who are merely extraordinarily good at programming tend to have a lot of downtime in between short engagements.

Some people think that if you have social skills you can't be a 'real' hacker, but often sales skills and good presentation are a force multiplier for a contractor with good technical skills.

Sure, no doubt. You'll never hear me speak against having sales skills or any other kind of skill. I'm for having as many skills as possible. There are no "mutually exclusive" skills, so people who think gaining sales skill causes hacker skill to magically disappear are wrong. And there are those -- also wrong -- who think having programming skill automatically means you can't be good at communication.