title: Python regex to convert non-ascii characters in a string to closest ascii equivalents
body: <p>I'm seeking simple Python function that takes a string and returns a similar one but with all non-ascii characters converted to their closest ascii equivalent.
  For example, diacritics and whatnot should be dropped.
  I'm imagining there must be a pretty canonical way to do this and there are plenty of related stackoverflow questions but I'm not finding a simple answer so it seemed worth a separate question.</p>
  
  <p>Example input/output:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"Étienne" -&gt; "Etienne"
  </code></pre>