Or using him to help with their branding, as in the case of the Adam Smith Institute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith_Institute

Great example! That seems like exactly the "government bad, deregulation good" pop Adam Smith that the original article criticizes.

It's surprising how shamelessly they are doing it. I would have expected more sophistry.

Is it? It says things like "Smith is critical of government and officialdom, but is no champion of laissez-faire" and "A further theme of The Wealth Of Nations is that competition and free exchange are under threat from the monopolies, tax preferences, controls, and other privileges that producers extract from the government authorities".

I would say that is fairly accurate.

I've noticed that when it comes to Adam Smith there's no shortage of people who try to make out he was some kind of proto-communist while smugly telling off straw man economists for cherry picking him - but it doesn't seem true to me.

The "The role of government" paragraph is more balanced (though IMO still skewed - well, I should admit that I have only skimmed WoN), but the first paragraph is really not.

I just looked briefly and it looks like you're right.

Well yeah, some pundits obviously do that but I don't think most pawns do.