Fox News PoliticsRand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum are qualified by Fox Business for the earlier, second-string, debate on Thursday. Rand Paul’s reaction is that he will not participate; he feels that he is still in the top tier.
The GOP candidates who qualified for the prime-time, 9 p.m. EST debate are:
Donald Trump; Ted Cruz; Marco Rubio; Ben Carson; Chris Christie; Jeb Bush; and John Kasich.
This is the first time Paul has not qualified for a prime-time debate and his campaign, within minutes of the announcement, issued a statement complaining about the criteria.
“By any reasonable criteria Senator Paul has a top tier campaign,” his campaign said. “He will not let the media decide the tiers of this race and will instead take his message directly to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa.”
The FBN debate lineup was decided based on the results of national, New Hampshire and Iowa polling. To qualify for the prime-time debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls.
No word yet from Carly Fiorina’s campaign, although I suspect she will participate.
Is the decision to bow out a mistake by Rand Paul? Since he is polling in the low single digits, it seems to me that he should use whatever national exposure is available to him, but that is one person’s opinion.
Stella's Place 
I think Paul is a “right fighter”.
He believes that he should be on the main stage so he won’t take part in the undercard debate. I don’t know, I think any hearts or minds that Paul may reach during the undercard debate may like his stand against being labeled a “Less Than” and skipping the debate may be meaningless as for reaching people.
That said I think if Paul feels his message is viable, important and that he is running a “top tier” campaign then he should swallow his pride and take the opportunity to reach at least some constituents.
I never watch the undercard debate so I don’t know how much exposure Paul is tossing out. He is not going to be the nominee so my best guess is this will neither hurt or help him. I think he’ll drop out soon.
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I can’t believe Kasich is going to be on stage.
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I can’t either, with < 0%. If anybody belongs in the undercard category, it's him.
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Not to mention it’s cruel and unusual punishment to force us to listen to him.
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