I’ve run into this same situation recently, often with people I otherwise find very appealing. What I’ve found helpful, if I wish to maintain an open dialog with them, is to ask them to go to www.politicalcompass.org and take the political opinion quiz. It doesn’t take much effort. At the end of the quiz the respondent is ranked and their cumulative relative response to the questions are graphed on a dual axis graph (conservative-liberal vs. authoritative-libertarian). Their results are then compared to historical and current political and popular celebrities. It often show a far greater degree of agreement than assumed difference.
This offers an opportunity to refocus the future discussions on similarities and puts many of the more heated, emotional issues of the day in better perspective.
I’ve used this approach many times and it can be very constructive and help some of these people see that they have much more in common with “fly over” America than they think.
