Via the Daily Caller and Ace, this is like accusing Major League Baseball of “appropriating” Babe Ruth to promote baseball. It’s also a neat illustration of Jonah Goldberg’s point about how the media loves conservatives when they’re dead, so much so that Reagan isn’t even a conservative anymore in Mitchell’s telling. Still, let’s be honest: Our side does this too. Hawkish Democrats like Truman and JFK and Scoop Jackson are all staples of righty rhetoric whenever we want to beat liberals over the head for their dovishness. There are few things more politically useful than a dead icon from the other party who’s closer to your position than theirs. The difference between the sides in using this tactic, I think, is that we have more to choose from than they do. Reagan is the only iconic Republican president since World War II who was thoroughly and unmistakably conservative, so if you want to score a point on the right, you’re pretty much stuck with him. Hence Mitchell’s dilemma. In an argument about bipartisanship (or nonpartisanship), she’d be better off citing Eisenhower, but because Ike holds little ideological currency today, she’s forced to go for the Gipper. Conundrum.