socket.create_connection() does in fact set the timeout of the resulting socket object, so the issue is not an issue after all.

The problems I experienced was a result of sending the timeout as the third parameter to the HTTPConnection() constructor instead of a named parameter, i.e.:

  con = httplib.HTTPConnection(hostname, port, timeout)

should have been:

  con = httplib.HTTPConnection(hostname, port, timeout=timeout)