Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said that he is going to dedicate "every waking hour" to stopping Donald Trump from getting the party's 2016 nomination, arguing that the real estate tycoon would damage the GOP and hand the Democrats a White House victory.
"Think if we, the Republican Party, becomes the party of angry people, that insinuate that most immigrants are drug dealers or rapists, that's a terrible direction for our party," the Kentucky senator said on Fox Radio Thursday, BuzzFeed reported. "We are never going to grow as a party, we are never going to increase our vote among the Hispanic population, the black population, among women, all of those things we need to expand our party. Donald Trump takes us in the wrong direction."
"He would be a disaster," he added. "We'll be, we'll be slaughtered, in a landslide. That's why my every waking hour is to try to stop Donald Trump from being our nominee."
Paul has sought to capitalize on a slight momentum shift in his campaign after skipping the GOP debate Thursday because he didn't make the main stage and was relegated to the earlier undercard debate. Instead of landing in South Carolina, it was New York for Paul, where, in a two-day stint, he 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, according to CNN.
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."
Paul currently sits in ninth place among Republicans with 2.3 percent, nationally, according to the RealClear Politics averages of recent polling.
