Former Vice President Mike Pence, who would have gone down in history as one of the most complicit patsies ever to hold high office were it not for a very last-minute act of defiance, is visiting the Bay Area today — for possibly only the second time ever. And some Stanford students are planning to protest.

Is Pence what anyone would call a popular figure in Republican circles? Has anyone for one second believed he could be electable as a presidential candidate? The answer to both is no, and if you ask a true Trumper they'd probably say he should be strung up or burned at the stake because he had ONE JOB at the end of Trump's presidency and he failed to destroy democracy in order to get it done.

Stanford College Republicans reminded everyone on Wednesday that they are hosting Pence on campus — the title of the lecture he's giving is "How to Save America From the Woke Left," and I'm certain he'll have a lot of smart things to say on that. Pence will be speaking Thursday evening starting at 7 p.m. at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, as the group has advertised on Twitter. The free event was first announced a week ago, and Pence himself retweeted it.

Stanford has a bit more of a history of conservatism and nurturing right-wing figures than most universities in its echelon — and it is home to the conservative Hoover Institution think tank. But even still, you gotta feel for college-aged kids trying to make a stand as Republicans on a mostly liberal college campus — just look at those little fools!

And this morning the Stanford College Republicans were tweeting about some counter-chalking happening next to their chalk advertisement about the Pence event. The messages included "We Shouldn't Give Him a Platform" and "Don't Normalize Hate."

"It is unsurprising that members of the fascistic left are hell-bent on undermining our event with Vice President @Mike_Pence in anyway possible," the College Republicans write. "If the radical left had their way, this event wouldn’t be happening. But as we’ve said before, resistance is futile. We never loose [sic] and always win, and Vice President @Mike_Pence will speak to a packed house this evening!"

Better work on that spelling, kids! You're in college now!

Pence last was in the Bay Area, as far as we know, in November 2019, attending a couple of closed-door fundraisers.

Back in those pre-pandemic, pre-election days of November 2019, you may recall that Ann Coulter was invited to speak at UC Berkeley by the Berkeley College Republicans, and that resulted in a fairly significant protest that prompted a police response with riot gear. Coulter lectured about her anti-immigrant philosophies, though it's not clear if that lecture came before or after her ideological split from Trump — she now openly hates and mocks him and says he is "done" in the Republican Party.

Tonight's event could draw significant protest, and it's possible that some right-wing loonies from around the Bay could show up to cause trouble as well.

Last week, Pence was a featured speaker at a South Korea-based "peace summit" organized by the Universal Peace Federation, a.k.a. the latest incarnation of the religious movement founded by the Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, a.k.a. the Moonies. He apparently spoke about recent North Korean missile tests, and suggested that Trump had successfully had a "diplomatic breakthrough" with Kim Jong Un while he was president. "Peace follows strength" was apparently the crux of Pence's treatise, per the conservative rag the Washington Times.

And if you needed more proof that Pence remains loyal to Trumpworld even though Trump still regularly disparages him, just look at his Twitter, where he's promulgating party-line bullshit about how Trump was spied on by Democrats, etc. And he's really happy about all the anti-abortion stuff going on.

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