rick santorum and mike huckabee and carly fiorina. rand paul has declined to attend. he said he will not go. he believes he deserves to be on the main stage. joining us now to preview the debate is cnn political reporter is tom lobianco in our washington bureau. tom, what do you expect to see tonight? the establishment candidates at this point. we have seen this already. the field is really breaking apart into the tiers. you really have trump and cruz breaking away. if you are rubio, if you are christie, if you are kasich, you have to find a way to punch through. it s a tough dynamic for them. in this game of musical chairs, you see people like rand paul who were shoe-ins for the main stage a few months ago, now left on the undercard debate and even
some of the university towns. the ideological left. the hippy generation. they like bernie sanders. he reminds them of their professors, he talks the way they talk. clinton has to make a nuance value yes it s nice to hear about free tuition in the country but can you actually do it. i m a practical politician. i know how to compromise and get things done. bernie sanders doesn t have any baggage and i think that s why he s doing well. errol, sara, thank you. in the 8:00 hour we ll talk with senator rand paul about why he s skipping tonight s undercard debate after not qualifying for the main stage. a smartphone had had a lot to do with capturing el chapo. turns out it s not such a good idea to text and run. we ve got details ahead. but what if you could wake up to lower blood sugar? imagine loving your numbers.
trail, it s been trump hitting him very hard over this citizen question, the fact he was born in candidate. and cruz saying trump embodies new york values, suggesting he s a little too cozy with democrats. and cruz saying he would be better against hillary clinton in a general election. all of this happening over the last 48 hours. so i think that really sets the stage for where we re going to be tonight. as you know, senator rand paul and carly fiorina, they failed to make the cut for the main debate. fiorina will take part in the undercard debate. rand paul says thanks but no thanks. is time running out for these so-called second tier candidates, including mike huckabee and rick santorum, both of whom will also be in the second tier debate? on the one hand, no one has voted yet. but on the other hand, the polls do not look great for the candidates in the undercard debate. i think if you re mike huckabee or rick santorum, you basically need someone like trump or cruz
be. so tomorrow night fox news says you re not on that main stage and you said you will not be a part of the undercard debate. but if you read politico, politico added up all the polls and said they made a mistake, i should be in the poll. i meet their criteria. so my complaint is the criteria is arbitrary, but even meeting that standard, we met it and yet we re still not in it. and so my question to the republican party is do you want a bigger party or a smaller party when you exclude candidates who meet the criteria, i think that s a big mistake for the republican party. we have a lot of close races. a lot of close senate races that need the liberty movement in the party. the liberty movement can go a lot of different places. they don t always stay in the republican party. it s a big deal and i ve tried to keep the liberty movement engaged by giving them a candidate who agrees with them that carpet bombing the middle east isn t a great idea. collecting all the phone records isn t
undercard debate. we are three weeks from iowa, four from new hampshire. what does that do to the campaign? we will take it to the voters. i will be in new hampshire and iowa. we have a strong organization. right now, our public organization is stronger than any other candidate s in iowa. we deserve to be first here. we just can t accept artificial designation that tells supporters or voters in iowa that we re not in the first tier. everything indicates we ought to be in the first tier. want to ask you about the state of the union, first of all response to the state of the union. rare the response generates the interest that this one from nikki haley is. we are seeing reactions from republicans. she took clear shots at donald trump it seems, and trump is seeing plenty of republicans saying i am glad she did that, that s my republican party, that s somebody i want speaking for me. what did you think of nikki haley s message? i don t want the party