I'm starting to like Don Martin.

The National Post's Don Martin letting us in on another Stephen Harper flip-flop (emphasis added):

Tories ban lobbyists from campaign HQ

In what can only be spun as the token cleansing of a guilty conscience, the federal Conservatives have decided to ban lobbyists from their campaign war room.

That’s serious ingratitude for a government that depends on lobbyists to salvage its controversial messages and lousy media relations, but there are clearly some bedfellows too strange when voters are being wooed for a majority mandate...

Gone are the days when Mr. Harper smeared lobbyists as seedy influence peddlers commanding too much sway over Liberal government decision-making.

Why, it was only 16 months ago he was talking tough against the species. "My friends, and I'm serious about this, politics will no longer be a stepping stone to a lucrative career lobbying government," he pledged in a speech. "Make no mistake, if there are MPs in this room who want to use public office for their own benefit or if there are Hill staffers who dream of making it rich by trying to lobby a future Conservative government, if that's true of any of you, then you'd better make different plans or leave."

Well, look who’s lobbying now.

Yes, it's good to be a lobbyist in Stephen Harper's Ottawa, isn't it?

They are everywhere now: 5,265 of them have registered, and thanks to a curious bout of government footdragging in enshrining the Accountability legislation and lobbyist clampdown into law, tougher rules governing their conduct have not become legally binding...

Tune in CTV's Question Period or Mike Duffy Live or the daily CBC Politics show with Don Newman and you’ll find the friendly faces of gregarious lobbyists Tim Powers, Goldy Hyder or Geoff Norquay staring back as Tory toadies of the moment.

Changing the channel won't change the optics — with the Conservatives in power, lobbyists are as pervasive and persuasive as they ever were under Liberal rule. Only the names have changed in the old school behaviour of Canada’s New Government.

Cue Canada's wankers, screeching about that darned liberal media bias. At the National Post.