During the last two presidential debates, Republican challenger Mitt Romney unleashed internet obsessions around his "love of Big Bird" and "his binders full of women." However, Monday night, it was Barack Obama who delivered the evening's only meme-worthy line.
The president responded to Romney's claim that the US navy is now smaller than at any other time since 1917 with his first real zinger of the debate season:
You mentioned the navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
The internet's response: (via Buzzfeed)
The quote prompted the creation of a couple of odd Tumblrs like this one, but the real response was on Twitter. Users churned out 105,767 tweets per minute just after Obama spoke – it was the most-tweeted moment of the debate, according to the service.
Just waking up. To understand anything from my twitter feed for the past four hours I have to google "horses and bayonets."
— Mark Hoppus (@markhoppus) October 23, 2012
And, with impeccable timing as ever, the Obama campaign appears to have purchased promoted space atop the #horsesandbayonets Twitter trending topic:
By the way, in case you were wondering, bayonets were only recently removed from the US military's basic training regimen. According to Stars and Stripes, soldiers were learning how to fix a bayonet to the end of a rifle and stab an enemy until July 2010. Now, soldiers learn how to use a bayonet if someone takes control of their "primary weapon".
