Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul has made the cut for Thursday's main stage GOP debate, Fox News said Tuesday, after not qualifying for a debate earlier this month due to low polling numbers. A late surge in polls put the Kentucky senator in the Iowa debate just ahead of the early voting state's caucuses on Feb. 1.
For the last several debates, Paul has been on the bubble for the main debate stage, but he 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.
Fox News on Tuesday tweeted the debate line-up and stage positions, which included Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has since said that he was boycotting the debate because of an ongoing feud between him and Fox News host and debate moderator Megyn Kelly. Paul will join Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich.
The candidate lineup for the 9p ET Fox News-Google #GOPDebate on Thursday, January 28th: pic.twitter.com/OO6ExOojvt
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 26, 2016
"To qualify, a candidate needs to be either among the top six in an average of the five most recent national polls, or among the top five in an average of the five most recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls," Fox said in a statement, according to USA Today.
Paul railed against the media on Monday, saying they are "becoming God" in the way they make decisions about who makes the debate stage.
"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, according to Politico.
"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," he added. "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."
Paul sits near the bottom among the 2016 Republican field in recent polling. In national polling averages compiled by RealClear Politics, he is in 10th place at two percent and only ahead of Rick Santorum. In Iowa, he's in fifth place with 3.8 percent. in New Hampshire, he's in eighth place with 3.7 percent support.
