I sat down this morning intending to write an article about the absurd new crush that Mitt Romney and the GOP have on Bill Clinton. It’s a flagrant rewriting of history concerning the man that Republicans tried to impeach, but seek to cuddle up with now that he’s one of the most popular former presidents. But as I was doing research for the article I discovered that Michael Tomasky had already written it for the Daily Beast. So here are a few brazenly appropriated paragraphs:

It’s hardly a secret what Mitt Romney is up to in trying to invoke Bill Clinton’s name in ads and speeches. Clinton was the good Democrat. The sensible centrist. And—let’s lower our voices here—the white one. It’s been transparent since it started in May, made all the more so this week by using Clinton to slam Obama on welfare.

I hope he uses the occasion of his convention speech, and for that matter the whole fall campaign, to destroy Romney, saying to every swing voter: “If you voted for me, you’d be nuts to vote for this guy. He’s making up a version of me to serve his own purposes, and he’s against almost everything I stood for and stand for.”

It’s obvious that using Clinton to try to appeal to the Clinton swing voter is pretty central to the Romney plan. As soon as Romney polished off Rick Santorum back in May, he started singing Clinton’s praises. It was his way to appeal to the center. He doesn’t have the courage to do that by taking any actual centrist positions, of course. The positions remain hard right. So he chose to do it instead by using Clinton as the vehicle through which to make ominous insinuations about Obama, implying to audiences that Clinton was the sober pragmatist whose legacy the ultra-liberal Obama had defenestrated.

Clinton can do more than validate Obama. He has the authority to shred Romney. Some conservatives appear to have this fantasy, expressed by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post yesterday, that Clinton has more in common with Romney. That’s too ridiculous even to bother rebutting, except to note that it can provide fodder for some great laugh lines built around the idea that yes, back when he was president, Clinton did agree with Romney on several things, like abortion rights and the assault weapons ban. Then Romney changed all his positions. And, of course, there is the one issue that looms above all others, which Clinton could frame as a simple and devastating question: “Governor, if you think I’m so great, if you agree with me so much, why don’t you support my tax rate for the top 1 percent?”

Mitt Romney and his Republican Disinformation Society want Americans to forget that they were not merely opposed to Clinton’s agenda, they were veritably obsessed with demolishing him personally and politically. In addition to the impeachment over private personal matters, Republicans launched fruitless investigations into Arkansas land deals; they alleged that he ran drugs from state airstrips; they accused Hillary of murdering Vince Foster. The budget bill that led to years of prosperity did not receive a single Republican vote in congress. What it did receive was assertions of socialism and predictions of the end of America. Sound familiar?

Voters need to remember this when they hear Romney et al praise Clinton. They need to remember that their own agenda is diametrically opposed to the Clinton Doctrine. Republicans have a desperate need to latch onto Clinton because their own past presidents were such horrific failures. Clinton will be making the official nominating speech for Obama at the Democratic convention. George Bush won’t even be attending the Republican convention.

We can expect Bill Clinton’s name to be heard often in this election season. And it will be mentioned by both sides because they know that the American people respect him and his achievements. But every time Mitt Romney and the GOP mention Clinton’s name should be a reminder to vote for Obama, just as Clinton is going to do.