Look At the Stuff You Can Buy in Rand Paul’s Online Store

Eye charts, headphone skins, spy blockers—Rand has it all.


While GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has a tough road to the nomination, in one area, he may already be the winner: campaign merchandise. Today, the Paul campaign unveiled an expansive online store with a variety of items, ranging from the goofy to the inspired to the downright hideous. There is no denying it: Rand Paul means business. Here’s the best of what he has to offer:

Eye Chart

Rand Paul Store

Rand Paul is an eye doctor by training, and he’s continued to practice since becoming a senator. This sign, retailing for $20.16, should be a hit with Rand fans. “Professionally, he has corrected the vision of thousands and now will do the same thing in the White House,” the page says. “And we’re not talking about a new prescription for President Obama.” (Burn!)
 

Bag Toss Game

Rand Paul Store

“Bag toss game,” also known as cornhole, is a treasured past-time among the collar-popping College Republicans who are some of Paul’s most enthusiastic supporters. Look for this soon on a college campus near you. Boat shoes apparently not included, though you can score Rand beer koozies to go with it—six for $25!
 

Ladies Constitution Burnout Tee

Rand Paul Store

“Every fashionable Constitutional conservative needs this ladies fashion burnout tee,” the site proclaims. Good luck getting burned out on the Constitution if you’re wearing it. Unless you burn the shirt. But you shouldn’t do that. (It’s $40.)
 

Rand Paul Beats Headphone Skins

Rand Paul Store

Beats by Rand: No need to know what the kids are listening to when you are what the kids are listening to. With these $20 headphone “skins,” Paul may have just won the vote of every conservative with a $300 pair of headphones.

 

The Real Rand Woven Blanket

Rand Paul Store

This could be perceived as a craven play to stake out the GOP’s cuddle caucus. “It might be fun to have Rand in your living room at night engaging in deep discussions about objectivism, libertarianism, conservatism and a few other isms,” the site says. (Easy now, tiger.) For $75, you’ll have to settle for this.
 

NSA Spy Cam Blocker

Rand Paul Store

Admittedly, this is an extremely on-brand item for Rand. He will literally shield you from the prying eyes of the NSA while you “browse Facebook.” Of course, there is a very low chance the NSA is using your webcam to spy on you, unless you’ve ordered an Islamic State travel guide or have a few too many Yemeni passport stamps. Also to consider: the “spy cam blocker” has already been endorsed by InfoWars.

 

Rand Macbook Skin

Rand Paul Store

So you have a MacBook—congratulations. You are very cool. For $20, though, you can be even cooler. With this.
 

Stand With Rand Car Mats

Rand Paul Store

Stand With Rand is all over the Rand store, and this is a nice application of the clever slogan. But the suggestion that one stand with both feet on the mat, while driving, is a dangerous one. If you must, you should Sit with Rand.

Whether or not anyone actually buys any of these things, it’s pretty clear the Rand Paul merchandise team’s launch was a slam dunk compared to the Rand Paul digital strategy team’s launch. Check out some of the banners they made for people to use as avatars on Facebook:

Get those guys a bag toss set, stat.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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