Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul won't be on stage for Thursday night's GOP debate in South Carolina, and that could turn out to be his campaign's smartest move thus far. The Kentucky senator's decision to skip South Carolina after being pushed to the earlier undercard debate has generated more interest in his campaign and considerably more airtime than he could have hoped for at the Fox Business debate Thursday evening.
Instead of landing in South Carolina, it was New York for Paul, where, in a two-day stint, he has appeared on "The Daily Show," "The Dr. Oz Show," as well as interviews with Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, all providing him the opportunity to talk about why he skipped the debate and what that means for the party, as well as his vision for it.
What that translates into is at least 7 million sets of eyes on Paul compared to the 4.7 million that watched the last Fox Business debate, according to CNN. Paul has routinely been at the bottom in terms of speaking times during the debates.
However, as recently as Wednesday, Paul was trying to lobby Fox Business executives into letting him on the stage, citing a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll that was completed before the Jan. 10 Fox Business deadline but released 36 hours after it. Paul's poll numbers likely would have been good enough to get him into the debate, putting him in fifth place.
"It occurred within the window of time they prescribed," Paul told The Washington Post. "We're they will reevaluate and count this poll, which comes after the NBC/Marist poll, which also had us alone in fifth place. Our campaign is talking with them about re-evaluating the decision." Fox Business, however, said that the stage was set.
Paul said in an interview last week that he believes that the undercard debate should not even exist anymore. "I'm not sure where the purpose is anymore, if there ever was one," Paul told Politico. "I think if you have a national campaign, you've raised a significant amount of money, you're on the ballot, you've employed staff and you're actively campaigning, you've got to be in the debate."
The Kentucky senator has repeatedly criticized the debate formats, and, as early as last month, he said he would refuse to participate in any of the undercard debates.
"I won't participate in any kind of second-tier debate," Paul 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."
