One of them got so upset with Obama that when the talking point about "he is lurching the country into hard Left socialism" wasn't working, because I was giving him facts about what his platform has been thus far, and he admitted that his thoughts on Obama's agenda were based on nothing but "his own gut instinct", then he sidled into the other Conservative (contradictory) talking point;  that Obama had promised change and was doing nothing.

  This was already a victory, because that second talking point is _true_ and the first one is demonstrably rejected by the large bulk of the record thus far.  So I felt I had at least rescued him 5% from Crazy Fringe town.  But then I asked if he would rather see the country move to the Left and get _something_ done (since Obama had done nothing since taking office), or whether he'd rather see the country getting nothing done--but being safe from Obama's dangerous Leftwing policies (i.e. the status quo).  After a few minutes of largely irrelevant side discussions through which he wanted to change the subject (something about the Fed, something about ANWR), he had an epiphany.

(Or probably not an epiphany, since it was still clearly coming from the overplaying of hatred against Democrats, and he had pretzeled himself into defending a Progressive position because that was _just how committed_ he was to trashing Obama).  And he told me that yes, he would rather see legislation passed which would move the country to the Left, and maybe thus have a _chance_ of getting something positive accomplished--even if it was not in his own personal inclination of the ideology of the country, than see the status quo snuff out all progress.  And then he (kinda) blamed the Republicans and Blue Dogs in Congress for "not even trying to get anything done", for "wasting our paychecks to them."   

There was only one hurdle left--I had taken him from "Obama and the Democrats in Congress are all Socialists" to _defending_ the Progressive agenda as preferable to the status quo to attacking the Republicans for trying to STOP this Progressive agenda.  And eventually, he cleared that final hurdle as well.  I told him that the Tea Partiers might feel upset with both parties, but that they are doing the bidding of the corporations and the Republican Party by decrying any regulations of industry as "socialist".  ; By thus empowering those responsible for the continued re-election of Republicans and Blue Dogs.  And I actually got his admission that the Tea Partiers "probably didn't know this";  that all they had been sold was that they should try to weaken the government, and by doing that they were strengthening the status quo.  It became his opinion that the Tea Party Conservatives were "misinformed" by the news scoures they were watching.  (Yeah, we both knew what that meant.)

All in all, a very nice conversion from insanity to reason just by using a logical string of facts and completely unwinding his "gut instincts".  Will he still be a proud Conservative come Monday morning, hurling epithets at Nancy Pelosi and the ACLU and Bill Maher?  Probably.  But he got some illumination for about 10 minutes.  No, the other Conservative never came around, we just "agreed to disagree" after I disproved basically everything he said about Reagan.