Now that the adventure is over, it might be instructive to consider some of the ideas that seeped into the general consciousness. A meme, so named by the British evolutionist Richard Dawkins, is like a gene, except that instead of advancing through organisms, it moves through minds.
Memes are simply ideas that demonstrate a high rate of survival and transmission.
A meme was born. These words were chanted by Baker and the other Bush spokesmen until many Americans accepted them as a form of truth, even though it is clear that thousands of ballots were never counted at all. Another successful meme was the assault on the honesty of election judges and the courts in general. They were often characterized by the GOP as partisan crooks, unless their findings agreed with the Bush cause, in which case they were patriots. In other words, if Gore ended up with more votes, a cloud would be cast on Bush's claims.