@Canadiest & creativerealms
Oh, man! I hope so!
I feel that articles saying "There's no sense in trying to convince a wingnut citizen to see the light because....Dunning-Kruger or over-active Amygdalas or something...." are ultimately counter-productive to a degree. These are people who vote and have an oversized influence and voting power despite being 30% of the population.
One has to change their strategy instead, not give up. Facts alone wont help but you can appeal to their emotions, fears, insecurities, etc.
For many; It's about culture and tribalism. Being Far-Right-Wing is very much about their VERY IDENTITY. Many do....deep-down....have an inkling that "something is wrong" but they're so invested in their culture, faith, identity, party, etc. that going against it would be utterly anathema to them.
They are so brainwashed with the notion of "Progressives (Lefty, Moderate and even Sane True-Conservatives) are all these weird bacchanalian Hippie freaks who live in the Big City and drink lattés and laugh at us from their ivory towers where they watch Art-House films". It doesn't help that we tend to dismiss these Red State voters as a hive-mind of lost-causes who revel in being extras from "Deliverance".
True; Many are indeed macho, closed-minded bigots but many are also that way because they don't know any better and much of it is connected to the general malaise they feel. They're uneducated due to mediocre schooling, they're isolated, they were never taught how to adapt to change and all the good jobs have gone overseas. They tend to live in small towns and rural areas or big cities that are rust-belt ruined messes.
They need less-derision and more compassion. We can still snark about their bigotry, their leaders or the worst among them (brutish ammosexuals and hate-group members) but we should at least try to be less jerkish towards the average citizen like Farmer Brown, Factory Joe, Fat Granny in a Scooter, Myrtle The Hairdresser or the kids, Billy-Joe and Peggy-Sue.
Being a former-frummie, myself, I'm aware that even people with frummy-leanings can still be nice, decent, charitable, hard-working, otherwise perfectly-normal, functioning members of society. Many even have a dim-view of the frummiest among them. Many exposés of freaks like Benny Hinn, Jack T. Chick, "Gilligan the Kiddiddler" himself, etc. have been done by Conservative Christians.
Not all are lost-causes or "old dogs who can't learn new tricks". You just need a different approach and appeal to the factors I mentioned above.
Also; Democrats are Centrist and are basically the Republican Party of yesteryear.
