Hillary lifted Maureen Dowd’s favorite reference to Mitt Romney.

In a January 22, 2012 email to her favorite conspiracy theorist, Sid Blumenthal, Hillary referred to then Presidential candidate Mitt Romney as “Mittens.”

Isn’t she cute?

But is wasn’t Hillary who coined the preppy moniker. She’s not that clever. She simply picked up New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd’s pet name for Mitt Romney — “Mittens.”

It was The New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd, not Hillary, who dreamed up the pet name in a January 7, 2012 column about Santorum:

“But soon Santorum will be gone and Mittens will reign.”

Hillary must be a regular reader of Dowd’s commentary. That’s a little surprising because Dowd’s columns about the Clintons are usually blistering and scornful.

Consider a few recent of her recent comments:

• ‘Clintonian’ became a “synonym for skirting the truth”

• The “Clinton’s unseemly money grab” at the Clinton Foundation

• “Her paranoia, secrecy, scandals and disappearing act with emails from her time as secretary of state have inspired a cascade of comparisons with Nixon.”

• She refers to Bill as “The Big Dog”

• She refers to Hillary as “Hokey Chipotle Granny”

• In an open letter to Hillary, “You seem like an annoyed queen, radiating irritation at anyone who tries to hold you accountable.”

You get the picture.

But Hillary obviously appreciates Dowd’s wit and appropriated it for her own.

That’s nothing new for Hillary.

The same Hillary email referred to Newt Gingrich as “Grinch.” That, too, was not Hillary’s idea. As far back as 2006, a Newsweek cover called him as “The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas.” And in late 2011, right before Hillary wrote the email, Mother Jones called Newt “The Grinch.”

So that’s not original Hillary either.

But then again, not much is.