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On Tuesday, we Arizona Republicans get to go to the polls to decide whether we want to send Mitt Romney to the general election to lose by seven points, or Rick Santorum to lose by 17.

I, for one, would feel a whole lot better about handing Barack Hussein Obama the mandate a second-term affords if there remained some semblance of an opposition party, that could remind us what freedom truly means.

Believe it or not, I’m no more excited about a second Obama term than most of you are.

It’s not Obama himself that scares me. He’s a bright, charismatic, transformative figure who may well go down in history as a great president. No, what scares me is the kinds of people a second-term mandate will embolden. 

It reminds me of the final scene in the brilliant 1999 film “Election” in which Matthew Broderick’s character, having ruined his life as an Omaha teacher/husband in a noble effort to cheat Reese Witherspoon’s superachieving student-politician Tracy Flick out of a student council presidency, sees her get into the limo of an actual congressman. This overwhelming, visceral panic at the realization that the cat is, once and for all, out of the bag, prompts him to spend his last vestige of freedom as he hurls his 44-ounce Big Gulp right at the limo and runs away into the concrete jungle of New York City as credits roll.

At first glance, having lots of Tracy Flicks in positions of authority ought not seem so bad. These are smart, moral, resourceful, efficient, responsible people who care a whole lot about the planet and the future and believe government can do great things. They’re a far cry from what you get when Republicans are in power — lazy, myopic do-nothings who hide behind the Constitution to justify their selfishness.

In fact, voting for a Republican who touts the benefits of “small government” is like hiring a cop who interviews for the job by saying, “law enforcement can’t fix problems; law enforcement is the problem.” You’d think he could at least fake caring a little bit and not show up to the interview with donut powder already on his shirt.

So maybe it’s only natural that Tracy Flicks will come to rule us. We Republicans have no one to blame but ourselves.

But oh, what a soft slavery it will be. Imagine Tracy Flick telling you each and every day how your car doesn’t get good enough gas mileage, how there’s too much sodium in your diet, too much insensitivity in your language, too much waste, waste, waste, waste.

In that day you’ll wish to God there was an opposition party that would unapologetically defend your right to go to bed on a double bacon cheeseburger washed down with a tumbler of 18-year-old scotch and a box of Dominicans, but there will be no one to lobby your cause.

At least not if the opposition party in 2012 is headed by Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum. These clowns don’t believe in freedom at all. What they call “small government” is actually just big government taking big action to help big business in a big way, and the only freedoms they care about are the ones their constituency prefers to utilize, i.e., gun ownership, religious worship and property rights. 

That’s about the extent of their commitment to liberty and it’s why the conservative movement will be wandering in the wildnerness for the next 40 years.

So stupid is this year’s field of Republican presidential candidates that they’ve actually managed to trap themselves into a debate over contraception.

Just a few years ago, the Republicans had a tenable position with regard to abortion, a procedure that even its most ardent proponents call a necessary evil. But now, they’ve been dragged back 50 years into a debate over the morality of contraceptive devices, something that everyone, and I do mean everyone who doesn’t think Pope Benedict isn’t literally infallible, thinks is a good thing.

Are these clowns trying to alienate all women and all the men who have sex with them, just to satisfy the world’s few remaining prudes who constitute the whole of the social conservative base?

In 2004, this base was vital to the George W. Bush’s tight re-election win, exploited brilliantly by Karl Rove and company who introduced anti-gay marriage referrendums in key swing states. If Rove were to try that strategy in 2012, it would completely backfire and actually benefit the Democrats. Think about that for a second. It’s only been eight years, but that social conservative core has grown eight years older and there’s no young social conservatives to take their place.

This is why on Tuesday, in my final vote as a Republican before switching my party allegiance, I will be voting for Ron Paul. If you care a whit about freedom and want a viable alternative to the coming Tracy Flick tyranny, you’ll do the same.

Deep down, Romney, Santorum and Gingrich know this, which is why, in the midst of this bizarre debate over contraception, they hide behind libertarian ideals while still communicating in code to the fuddy-duddys that they don’t care for loose women, either.

Supposedly, their objection has nothing to do with contraception, but rather religious freedom, although it would be hard to imagine them supporting the right of a Jehovah’s Witness organization to be conscientious objectors to blood transfusions. 

And each time an establishment candidate tries to cloak his distaste for gays or single mothers or anyone else who’s ever been on the fringes of society in convenient libertarian ideals, Tracy Flick grows more and more powerful.

Why not get behind the real libertarian? True libertarianism is the only hope against the coming nanny state.

I know Ron Paul cannot win in a general election. In fact, he’d lose by 27 points, but oh, what a noble defeat it would be.