I'm really late but, Romney totally won.
(And there I was thinking he would do a horrible job!)

It goes in circles because you won't conceed that A) you don't understand the ways that definsiveness manifests and B) that Romney's performance is a text book example of a defensive behavior manifested agressively.

His platform was "Look at his record! This guy sucks! I am better! I am a champion of the middle class!" He spent his entire time personalizing attacks at President Obama instead of giving us, the viewer, the people he aims to gain political favor with, any real substance at all...Granted I think that Obama's sit and watch as Romney blows up and give a wry smile strategy was pretty pathetic as well...

There is also a difference between defending a position and being defensive...which you can also research...so no my definition is not too broad, it covers the commonly accepted definition of defensive behaviors.

I suspect you're using a definition of "defensive" from something like psychology which is not really applicable here ...

In the context of the debate the definition of defensive used is similar to how you would use it in the context of sports or military. Putting on pressure to "score" is not a defensive act, it is an offensive/aggressive act. By Romney attacking Obama's record he is going on the offensive to score points in order to "win" the debate and forces Obama to defend his record to prevent these points from being scored.

You're (essentially) arguing that a football team that spent 45:00 minutes on offense (compared to their opposition who only spent 15:00 on offense) and won the game 49 to 7 was playing a very defensive game.

Even using the psychology definition, Romney becoming aggressive in response to pressure from Obama on his record could be seen as a defensive act but Obama never really put any pressure on Romney. Hypothetically speaking, if Obama was pressuring Romney based on his record as governor and Romney responded with a attack on Obama to change the topic I would say that it was a defensive move; but Romney was calm and addressed all of Obama's critical statements and then countered back, which is clearly not a defensive act.

It seems the polls have tightened in Romney's favor over the last week, though also we seem to have reduced the swing states down to 4: Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, and Florida.

Meanwhile, Romney's flip-flopping on abortion... again.

I wish, he's not flip flopping so much as carefully wording things to make moderates think he's flip flopping.

I believe he used these words

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

Which to me soudns like "Nothing currently is congress is something I would support... well nothing that I know of!"

That's not what RCP aggregates say:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html

Up to 10 toss up states.

That football analogy is a horrible way to demonstrate your point, especially since there is no comparison between a full contact sport and a debate. You'd have to assume A) There is a clear concise scoring mechanism that can be used as a similar parallel, B) There are clear lines of offense and defence that can be established regardless of behavior. The problem with that, is neither exist and both are subject heavily to opinion. Even the things I suggest are opinion by the defintion of the term opinion, despite the fact that they best describe Romney's behavior.

Being defensive and agressive does not necesarily mean you obviously loose your cool. There are obvious markers in his performance, such as his rebuttals to remarks and any questions he was the lead on not having concise remarks that actually established that he had the better policy on anything. The majority of his remarks followed this format:

1. Comment on how Obama's policy is a failure or how he did not comply with the policies that he promised America.

2. Present rhetoric abstract that makes it sound like there is a calculated plan that is superior to Obama, despite providing no details.

3. OR deny stance that is accurate with his own record.

I realize that is really basic, but the interest of saving time... Your Go!

You don't seem to be aware that debating is a competitive activity with well established objective scoring mechanisms ... Here's a link to a debate scoring rubric (http://www.csun.edu/~ds56723/phil338/hout338rubric.htm) and as you can see one of the criteria is:

3. Use of cross-examination and rebuttal: 

Identification of weakness in "opposing" team’s arguments and ability to defend itself against attack.

The ONLY person who seems to have any trouble understanding what it means to defend or attack in the context of a debate is you.

Lol...now that is a perfect example of defensive behavior manifesting agressively...

1. Your highschool/college debate teams may use these rules and judges may use those rules in courtrooms to decern the argument with more merit in a case, but the public is not subject to that strict criteria. A presidential debate's scoreboard is public polls which are scored by...well the publics opinion, not by a scoring system...Those rules you defined are used on debate teams and in court rooms all around the USA; however, given that public opinion is the deciding factor the rules you are trying to use to back your football analogy are more an art not a science. There is no referee out there saying ," Well here's what you need to consider about your opinion...When you put it to the scruitiny of rule one ect so forth and so on, you see that this opinion doesn't really have merit and therefore your opinion doesn't accurately score the performance of person X."

2. So that leaves using psychological methods as one means to scruitinize the performance of our debators. I err on the commonly accepted opinion about Obama's performance that it was poor, hell even Obama errs on that side; but in Romney's case the question is did he do a good job in putting the president on the defensive? My contention is no, he did not do a good job. Firstly the POTUS was on the defensive from the begining of the debate and very passive in his remarks. Secondly, Romney's attacks have been ineffective and largely scrutized by fact checkers (this is not to say that fact checkers were not heavily critical Obama's remarks as well) as not matching the platform he's been running on since the Primaries. Thirdly and most importantly most polls show that this debate played out in Obama's favor and this is the most important thing that needs to be examined.

As of yesterday, several projection sites have shown a sharp increase in the presidents approval rating (53%) which is remarkable given a bad debate and loosing the state of NC to Romney post debate. When a current president is tracking that high in the public opinion, that is a really good sign that he will be re-elected. But how is that possible if Romney truly had the better rhetoric..

3. So lets apply a little critical thinking here:

a) Romney has no platform that appeals to moderates. Anyone who has been paying attention to Romney throughout the primaries and even the last primaries knows his platform pandered to neo-cons during those primaries on many issues. This has been demonstrated in his stance on the middle class going from "Corporations are people" to " I will be the champion of the middle class" or to go on record (this was stated after the debate but is still relevant and I will explain why in a minute) stating he knew of no abortion laws in congress that would be a part of his agenda, to reasserting his pro-life platform last night. He was trying to establish himself as a moderate candidate to appeal to moderate voters.

b) with point a being established this shows a very important trend in this debate. Romney has several holes in his arugments, not because they were not well thought out its because Romney just wants to get elected another import detail. His interest is in being president, not in  being a champion of a specific platform. Becuase of this he knew his arguments were cellophane. This is why he avoided statisitcs in most of his arguments and rebuttals and the few times he did so he was slammed by fact checkers. The only way he could hold any ground during that debate was to use cross examination as clearly his neo-con platform was not going to fly with the moderate public who he has still yet to win over.

c) Point B being established, let's look at the actual psychology of this tactic. Relying purely on the POTUS' record to make his case? Well...first off that tactic demonstrates an ad hominem argument, because making the other guy look bad for his "failed policies" does not make your platform a good solution. He relied on cross examination purely instead of having a concrete policy of his own to combat with, because moderates would have behaved unfavorably. He needed that smoke screen of the presidents record to hide behind. That is defensive behavior.

d) I will correct myself on one point, because I went back and watched whole debate last night. There are at least two points where Romney became overtly angry with the moderator for cutting him off during his rebuttals, both of which were cross examinations.

So here's the bottom line:

a) I am not arguing Obama's terrible form that night, but just becuase he did a poor job does not mean that Romney did a good job. He was defensive / agressive and lacked any clear concise arguments that made his "policy" stand out as any better than Obama's relying on cross examination to hide this. B) That being said I only argue the "did he win" because its intersting. There is nothing interesting about Obama's form, however consensus that Romney was a clear winner (or even barely a winner) is facinating and merits examination. C) These debates are not tested against the same rules as your college debate team. The public opinion is the ONLY gauge.  It follows no specific standard of any kind, therefore football and debates have nothing in common. D) You may understand how a debate works in a certain setting, but I don't think you understand how they work in the political arena. E) I'm doing this for fun to kill a little time at work while things are slow, I am not aiming to attack anyone with personal remarks, so the last remark you made shows thin skin and was bad form dude. F) That dog in the superman suit is freakin awesome!!!! Let's be friends, I don't argue to hate :(

This just seems like a desperate move to get back in the news.  Poor lindsay lohan...

Well, at least romney didn't get endorsed by Hugo chavez, that would be embarassing...