The specific case I'm talking about was the NSA doing some computer research by hardening Linux. MS used its lobbying to stop that. Otherwise, yes, MS tries very hard to stop adoption of Linux. Read what happened in Munich when it looked like Linux would win the bid on price and merits. Look what happened when India decided they could save money by going OSS. You would not believe the pressure they put on Largo, Florida after they switched to Linux. The IT managers were being grilled by the MS reps as to why they switched (they stopped when they had to admit they couldn't provide that capability for that low a budget).
Rather, what they're doing is addressing the morons in our wonderful government who want to mandate that only open source solutions be considered
That's not a bad idea, within reason. Every good organization has a program in place to ensure that everything is purchased from the lowest-cost vendor, providing that it meets certain objective requirements ("can it do the job"). This should be law for government purchases, and it actually already is, but it seems to be ignored where software is concerned.
Obviously, OSS isn't for all things. If I want to set up a video editing or print graphics shop, there's pretty much no way that OSS will meet any objective requirements since the software just isn't there. But if I'm setting up an office of a thousand workers who will be using word processors, web browsers and spread sheets, how can I justify spending millions of dollars on licenses and support when I can get the whole thing for just the cost of the support? To go proprietary would be a waste of our tax dollars.
I'm somewhat familiar with these cases. Microsoft tried their best to win these contracts. What's wrong/unexpected about that? And in no case did I see Microsoft attempt to have closed-source software mandated as a matter of blanket policy/legislation, as open source proponents are attempting.