The other question is, if Romney's stance at the primaries was the same as the debate last night, would he have still gotten the position as Republican candidate?

A lot of Republican supporters are cheering that he won, but that's probably from a "he's on our team" standpoint. Shouldn't they be upset that his political position is beginning to shift, from what they voted for in the primaries?

exactly.  I don't think Romney would have gotten the nomination without going to his right... but I don't think that is actually who he is.  It is the whole flip flopper, do whatever he can to get elected charge.  I believe that this is why Romney has been lacking on the details of his plans.  If Romney had said his plan wouldn't reduce the tax burden during the primaries, he would have been booed off the stage.  His plan has now morphed into a fairly moderate plan, which is good.  

Honestly, I hope Romney starts filling in his specifics with more moderate positions, because I think it would make him a better candidate.  I liked the Romney that ran the olympics in my state, if that Romney comes back, I might even vote for him.  

Yeah.  I mean Romney was even more moderate then he was in the debate before he ran for president.  Some would even say liberal.  He is Mass afterall.   

He went out of his way to get gay voters by suggesting "full equality" back when even most democrats weren't supporting gay marriage.

That said, I think it's less of a shift then you'd think... and it's been a shift that's been happening since the priamaries, it just hasn't been noticed because of the ridiculious number of democratic attack ads.

How come they both suck up to the middle class? Don't they realize they have a 15% poverty rate in their country to sort out first?

Because most people think they are in the Middle Class, most people between say... 25,000 and 200,000 will say they're middle class. (guestimatied numbers)

I wanted to see the first 10 minutes of the debate...ended up watching the whole thing.

From what I gathered, Romney was more smooth in his speech pattern than Obama.  That doesn't matter since all that does is what they say. Unfortunately, what he had to say wasn't particularly convincing. 

There was a lot of pointing fingers, but I saw Romney back up those fingers more than Obama has.

Pretty boring, tbh. I sense that the VP debate will be better, if only because Biden's hilarious.

Anyway, I gave it to Romney, because of one line, and one line only... paraphrased:

"You go on about education, but you gave $90 billion to green energy companies, half of whom are now out of business. $90 BILLION! You could have hired 2 million(?) teachers with that! Instead, you gave it to the guys who financed your campaign.".

Romney calling out corruption?

Actually that was the dumbest argument in the whole debate. Assuming that $90b argument is even true (doubtful as pretty much every number was false in the debate), what are you going to do with your 2m teachers the year after you hired them (you just spent the whole money for one year...)?

It was interesting to watch the "debate" as a European. Not because the debate was interesting (from its contents and layout it was total crap), but because of how the two guys behaved. Hillarious how they both frantically shook hands at the beginning, neither one willing to stop shaking the other guy's hand (because the underlings told them it would "look bad if you let go first"). Then we had Romney saying absolutely nothing of value during the debate (expected as he hasn't said anything of interest in the past 18 months except when caught off-guard), and Obama completely unable to understand (and recover afterwards) that he got owned by Romney's reply to his assumingly wedding day opening zinger (it was completely clear that Ronmey had expected that opener and was prepared).  From that moment on it was downhill for Obama for the rest of the evening - not quite unexpected as his re-election staff basically seems to consists entirely of yess-sayers and Obama-worshippers.

I'd assume this debate goes into the books as another "unshaved Nixon debate" example.

Lastly, I'm still amazed that the race still is open. With the economic situation (and the short attention span of the average american) , it should be easy for _anyone_ to beat Obama.

did'nt watch,don't care. Obama is probably going to win anyways.

Like all numbers thrown out by politicians the $90 Billion is mostly correct as long as you accept their definition of what is included in the funding ...

The talk about the teachers (in my opinion) was to put $90 Billion into terms that the average voter could understand and relate to the rest of Obama's platform. With Obama bragging about hiring 100,000 math and science teachers, demonstrating that his funding of green energy projects with close ties to his political campaing could have hired 2,000,000 math and science teachers is far more damaging than just listing the $90 Billion number.

Another example is turning the $700 Billion stimulus into real job numbers ... Assuming a total cost of employing them at $100,000 per year and these employees wouldn't generate any revenue to support their job position, the $787 Billion stimulus could have hired 1.96 Million people for 4 years. In contrast, the CBO estimated that between 0.2 and 1.5 million jobs were created by the stimulus (http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/05/cbo-obama-stimulus-may-have-cost-as-much-as-4-1-million-a-job/).