17th Amendment Hooey

The stalwarts of the Tea Party stumble daily from dumb ideas to dumber ones, but I think the dumbest idea yet is repealing the 17th amendment. The latest to sign on to this bizarre notion is Joe Miller, the Republican, Tea Party-backed candidate for senator in Alaska. The Fairbanks News Miner reports that at a Town Hall meeting Monday night:

He called the idea of a living, changing Constitution "bullcrap," and said he would support an amendment for term limits as well as an amendment repealing the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct election of senators by the public rather than by state legislatures.

This is such a horrible idea that I can't believe it really has popular support. How many voters want to amend the constitution to take their votes away? It is flat out anti-democratic, and I thought the Tea Party was supposed to be about taking power away from insiders and restoring it to the people.

But the biggest problem with the idea, as other people have pointed out, is that it would nationalize state elections. Suddenly people will judge their state legislators on only one issue: whether they would support or oppose incumbent senators. So much for roads, schools, police, and all the other things that state legislators should be thinking about.