No improvement

Of all the criticisms levelled at Sandra Buckler during her stint as Deceivin' Stephen's communications direction, I don't recall "insufficiently partisan" ever coming up. But apparently that's the issue the Cons were most concerned with in naming Corn Cob Kory as her replacement and otherwise revamping the PMO:

Sources say Mr. Giorno has already promoted or fired some staff in an effort to gear up the PMO for the next federal election, which could come as early as this fall. The objective has been to replace "bureaucratic" aides with more overtly political staff, said one Conservative source.

The government is expected to be more proactive at hammering home its political message under Mr. Teneycke, who is believed to have played a major role in the government's recent attacks on Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's plans for a carbon tax. Relations with the parliamentary press gallery might not necessarily become more friendly, but reporters will no longer receive little or no response to requests for comment, said the source.

"The PMO's going to become a lot more political. It's going to be a lot more aggressive . . . Every single story, we're going to try to get our say in."

Now, there were certainly problems with the previous strategy of simply stonewalling any request for comment. But it's difficult to see how the new plan of attack will do much other than to make the Cons seem ever more petty and self-absorbed.

After all, if the media wanted the Cons' spin on an issue (as distinct from what would presumably be a more official response from the PMO), wouldn't it make sense that it would be seeking that information from the party office rather than Canada's executive branch? And does anybody but the most deluded of Harper cult followers think that the same old spin will be better received coming from the PMO instead?