Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he will not participate if he is relegated to the second tier in next month's Fox Business Network GOP presidential debate.
Unless Paul's poll numbers rise in the next couple of weeks, he won't make the cut, according to
new rules announced by Fox Business on Monday.
To make the main stage of the January 14 debate candidates must poll either in the top six nationally or in the top five in either Iowa or New Hampshire, the first two states to vote.
"I won't participate in any kind of second-tier debate," Paul said Monday on Fox News Radio's
"Kilmeade and Friends." "We’ve got a first-tier campaign."
"I'm not gonna let any network or anybody tell me we’re not a first-tier campaign," Paul said.
"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. This is going to lay it up in the lap for Donald Trump if you don’t want to allow any competition."
Paul called polls artificial and unscientific, adding that if polls are going to be used to decide who wins there is no point in having elections.
"We can have 'American Idol' contests instead," he said.
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