What we are seeing is a very interesting form of meme, a meme that is propagated in the exact same form, unmutated, by hosts who both support and oppose the idea coveyed by the meme itself.
Republicans have tried to refer to filibuster amendment as the ‘Byrd option’ or the ‘constitutional option’. Josh Marshall points to a memo urging Republicans not to use the ‘nuclear option’ epithet.
What is interesting is that both sides cannot help but use the term, despite the fact that it looks like a purely pejorative phrase.
This is an unusually viral phrase because of its dual appeal. It appeals to Republicans because of its viscerally combative stance and to Democrats because of its alarmist quality.
If one looks at memes such as religious ideas, they obviously transfer from one believer to another. Imagine an entire idea system as perfectly symmetrical as the ‘nuclear option’ phrase that infected both believers and non-believers. This would be like an end-game meme – one that spread far more quickly than normal but at the expense of a lower mutation rate.