Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said Monday that he will make the main stage of Thursday's GOP debate in Des Moines, if Fox News handles things properly - a claim the Kentucky senator has made for the last several debates.
"We think we'll be in the first tier if you count the polls," Paul said on Fox Business on Monday, according to Politico. Paul railed against the media, saying that it is "becoming God" in determining which candidates are allowed on the stage and adding that it was a "big mistake" keeping him from the last debate.
"It's arbitrary - look, you guys just decide out of the blue which polls you're going to use, you don't announce which polls you're going to use, and then you don't understand what margin of error is - look at the recent poll - it's plus or minus 5," Paul said, referring to the latest Fox News poll. "So someone who's at 5 percent is no different than someone who's at 10 percent if the margin of error's 5. So you're using polls in an unscientific way. It's a real mistake, but it's also a disservice to the voters because you are becoming God...you also ignored polls from some of the most prominent people like the Des Moines Register, which are polling in Iowa, live in Iowa, and showed me ahead of two of the three people you had on the stage. So yeah, I think you made a big mistake excluding us from the debate."
For the last several debates, Paul has been on the bubble for the main debate stage, but did not make the cut-off for the most recent one in South Carolina and decided to boycott the earlier undercard debate. Paul has repeatedly criticized the debate formats, saying last month that he would flat out refuse to participate in any of the undercard debates and going as far as telling Politico that they should no longer exist.
"I won't participate in any kind of second-tier debate," the Kentucky senator said on Fox Business, BuzzFeed reported. "We've got a first-tier campaign. I've got 800 precinct chairman in Iowa. I've got a 100 people on the ground working for me. I've raised 25 million dollars. I'm not gonna let any network or anybody tell me we're not a first-tier campaign. If you tell a campaign with three weeks to go that they're in the second-tier, you destroy the campaign. This isn't the job of the media to pick who wins. The voters ought to get a chance."
In recent polling, Paul sits near the bottom among the 2016 Republican field. In national polling averages compiled by RealClear Politics, he's tied for eighth place with Mike Huckabee at 2.2 percent support. In Iowa, he's in sixth place with 3.4 percent. in New Hampshire, he's in seventh place with 4.4 percent support.
