It was always too much to hope that a commercial space launch facility in private hands would not be co-opted by government. The combination of private money, Silicon Valley cool and waving the flag for private enterprise was a tempting morsel for the Obama administration.
The Washington Post is describing the test launch of the Falcon 9 in those juicy terms beloved of lobbyists, earmarks and boondoggles "in a major test for the commercial space industry". A successful test flight does not define a major industry, but ramping up the rhetoric on government/private sector contractual partnerships and supporting the international space station will lead to another suckler of the taxpayer's teat (the more nascent the better).
Such rhetoric warns us of the dangers that NASA poses in stifling innovation and commercial markets in space. Why develop alternative services when the government becomes your sole and very important customer? The moral of the story is: if you can't beat them, buy them.