Does libcurl provide the abstractions to make that transition simpler than directly adding support for the platform libraries to Python's TLS implementation?
I can't say for certain regarding this case specifically, but CURLOPT_CONNECT_ONLY (as I recall) does the TLS and proxy shenanigans, and then waits for you to say "HTTP 1.1" and so on. You can send and receive data using a BSD_socket-a-like API.
