First Presidential debate Oct 3rd

Ok, didn't manage to catch all of the debate, but I saw a large portion of it.

I'm firmly of the belief that the system for political debates is kinda retarded. Arguing a point with limited prep time and only 2 minutes to speak is crazy nightmare.

But onto the debate itself.

All of the analysts are saying that Romney won the debate. Mainly in that he gave the impression that he was giving concrete details, while he in fact was disagreeing with himself all the time.

Example:
Obama says that his medical plan is exactly like the one Romney used in Massachusetts.
Romney responds that no their plans are totally different because his was a bi-partisan effort.
Obama responds that regardless of who made it, the two plans are the exact same formula, with a couple additions.
Romney changes the subject to complain that medical care should be the problem of the state, not the federal government.
Obama rolls his eyes.

This is something that has been bugging me for the last fifteen years that I've actually paid attention to politics.

Republican candidates always say that they want LESS Federal control, MORE state control, LOWER taxes, but HIGHER spending.

Taking the first two under examination, the Republican party doesn't actually have a good record with those two concepts. Every time we get Republicans in power, they want to Increase Federal control (Hello? Patriot Act?) and try to take the power away from the states by trying to enforce morality/religion. I'm sure I could come up with better examples, but I'm tired.

Second part they actually keep their word on, but it's fiscally insane. You can't reasonably spend money that you don't have. Hence why every time we get a Democrat in office, they have to reduce their spending and increase taxes to pay for the debt of the previous administration.

Romney is doing the same thing in his campaign.
 He's talking about reducing taxes again but keeping the budget basically the same, so yet again, more debt. It's like giving a teenager a credit card with $100 in the bank and no spending limit. You hope that they will be smart enough not to spend more than the $100 they have, but with no limit they are spending like crazy. And given our financial crisis, that's fucking insane.

But the whole concept of putting the power back in the states, yes, it's permanently part of the platform, but they'll never actually do it. More control for the states requires more money for the states. So either Federal taxes need to go down so State taxes can go up, or the federal government needs to give a sizable percentage of their earnings to the states.

So yeah, much of the debate was simply massive research and math failures.
But I am looking forward to the VP debate. Mostly to see what crazy shit Paul Ryan will say.