‘Horses and bayonets’ the most tweeted moment of Monday’s debate

Plus, an awkward gaffe from the moderator lights up Twitter. Here are the night’s social media winners and losers.

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The Twittersphere hung its hat on several topics that came up in the debate, namely horses and bayonets, a Bob Schieffer gaffe, and domestic policy overshadowing foreign policy.

President Obama offered a sassy response to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for his repeated attack over the shrinking size of the Navy. Obama said:

“You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. It’s not a game of battleship where we’re counting ships.”

According to Wall Street Journal social media editor Liz Heron, the most-tweeted moment of the debate was #horsesandbayonets, at 105,767 tweets per minute.

Some tweets on the topic:

Sustainable energy expert Arian Ardie: “What does it say about America when ‪#horsesandbayonets‬ is the most tweeted in a foreign policy?”

MSNBC host Alex Wagner: “#HorsesAndBayonets the new #BigBird?”

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