My dad is a lifelong conservative Republican (I must have missed that gene...). He lives in rural western Pennsylvania. I spoke with him on the phone last weekend. I don't have a history of talking politics with him (think head/brick wall) but I couldn't resist saying that it looks like PA will be going for Obama. He agreed but then said that he would still be supporting McCain. I expected that but what floored me was his exuberant praise of Palin. Arrgh! I tried telling him that she lied all the time but the conversation was going nowhere so I just closed by saying "You have the chance to be on the right side of history here."
I was going to leave it there and not get into it with him, but then I saw the other diary
http://www.dailykos.com/...
on the CrossLeft petition, and that seemed like language he might understand (he's also a conservative Christian - don't know that I'd go so far as to call him a fundamentalist because I don't think he's a Biblical literalist). So I sent him an email with the text of the petition, and for good measure pasted in the listing of Palin's 18 lies from the debate.
Don't know what else I can do, and don't know if it will do any good, but at least I tried...
UPDATE: I should have mentioned that my dad is 94. He gave me some good genes, if not a workable political philosophy...