Sarah Palin’s Checkers speech

A Republican war hero picks an inexperienced right-winger as his running mate.

Questions quickly arise about the upstart VP candidate’s qualifications, and a scandal gets national media attention. But the running mate wows the party’s conservative base with a scrappy televised speech, turning the table with attacks on Democrats and the media.

Sound familiar? Yeah, I’m talking about Richard Nixon.

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There are remarkable parallels between Nixon’s famous “Checkers speech,” which saved his spot alongside Ike in 1952, and Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican convention, which ... well, which may have done the same thing for her.Here’s one of the speeches:

I know that this is not the last of the smears. In spite of my explanation tonight, other smears will be made. Others have been made in the past. And the purpose of the smears, I know, is this, to silence me, to make me let up. Well, they just don’t know who they are dealing with.