Obama's "horses and bayonets" moment becomes instant meme [VIDEO]

In what became the instantly viral moment from the final presidential debate of the 2012 election season, President Barack Obama turned Governor Mitt Romney's argument against reducing the size of the military into a laugh line.

"You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916," Obama said. "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."

"And so the question is not a game of battleship, where we're counting ships*."

Watch:

Within moments, a hashtag, several Tumblrs, a pro-Obama site and Twitter accounts were born. The Obama campaign promoted search terms on Twitter for "horses," "horses and bayonets," and "battleship," with a tweet knocking Romney's policies for the military.

It was also, according to Twitter's @gov account, the most tweeted moment of the debate:

CHART: At 106k TPM, "Horses & Bayonets" most-tweeted moment of #lynndebate. Total debate 6.5 million. #debates twitter.com/gov/status/260…

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— Twitter Government (@gov) October 23, 2012

Click through the slideshow for some of the best "horses and bayonets" themed memes to hit the internet in the moments after the debate.

*Correction: The original rush transcript had President Obama saying "where we're counting slips." The official White House transcript later corrected it to "we're counting ships."