Over the last few weeks, and more widely publicized with the win of Ayn Rand Paul, a new meme seems to have taken hold in the Tea Party establishment: Repeal the 17th Amendment!6 Whoa there, sparky! Do you know what you're talking about? Probably not. Here's the text of the 17th Amendment, and over the fold I'll explain the meme and why it would completely work against them:
Amendment XVII 1
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any state in the Senate, the executive authority of such state shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, that the legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
The Constitution, pre-17th Amendment, mandated that the legislature of each state choose two Senators to represent the state in Washington:
Article I, Section 3, Clause 1: 2
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
This was done because, originally, Senators were meant to represent the State government in the Federal government to maintain the balance between the two. Also, it was thought that election via state legislature as opposed to direct election would insulate the Senators from the distraction of worrying about campaigning (ain't that the truth).
Starting in the late 1800s, however, party bosses and corruption started to grip the process. Legislatures started looking towards the highest bidder to determine who would be that state's Senator, and the people started to get pissed.
In order to bring the election of Senators back to the people and away from the corrupt legislatures, the 17th amendment was drafted. It passed Congress on May 13, 1912 and was ratified by the states 330 days later on April 8, 1913.3
Ah yes, direct election of Senators by the people. How nicely that holds up with Thomas Jefferson's immortal words "we the people," and Abraham Lincoln's words from the Gettysburg Address: "...government of the people, by the people, for the people." A true patriot like a Tea Partier, who uses these words more than a history textbook, wouldn't be against such an ideal, right?
Wrong.
They're so caught up in the "STATES RIGHTS NOW DERP DERP DERP" argument that they fail to see that giving the election of Senators back to the state governments will, in reality, screw them over big time. It will make the election of Senators even MORE corrupt and bring about a culture of sleazy backroom deals that those pure, uncorrupted Tea Partiers despise so much (when they're out of power, that is).
Let's assume that each state legislature will elect two Senators based on its current party makeup (image from Wikipedia)4 :
The 27 states in blue have both houses of their legislature controlled by Democrats.
The 13 states in red have both houses of their legislature controlled by Republicans.
The 9 states in purple have a split legislature, each party controls one house in the legislature.
The black state, Nebraska, has an "officially nonpartisan" unicameral state legislature. The members of the legislature are overwhelmingly Republican, so even though the legislature is nonpartisan, it's controlled by Republicans.
Now, remember, we're working under the assumption that each legislature will elect two senators of the same party that controls the state government. Since teabaggers can't spell, I'm certain they can't do math.
27 blue states with 2 Senators = 54 DEMOCRATIC SENATORS
14 red states with 2 Senators = 28 REPUBLICAN SENATORS
Wow. That certainly doesn't bode well for the Tea Party, now does it?
What do we do with the other 9 purple states? I'm not sure to be honest. For the sake of argument, we'll give them their Senators based on the parties to which their two Senators currently belong5:
AK - 1 Rep 1 Dem
MT - 2 Dems
MI - 2 Dems
IN - 1 Rep 1 Dem
KY - 2 Reps
OH - 1 Rep 1 Dem
TN - 2 Reps
VA - 2 Dems
PA - 2 Dems
Now, let's add these totals onto the previous totals, and that gives us a grand total of...
65 Democratic Senators
35 Republican Senators
Holy mother of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They really don't want that, now do they? Even if every purple state swings red, the Republicans would still fall 9 seats short of a plurality.
I can think of a few ways they could try to prevent that much of a slaughtering in the Senate under their brilliant plan of repeal. First, they would need to stop focusing on their 'safe zones' and actually focus on every square mile of the United States. These people don't have the motivation to spell check their damn protest signs let alone canvass the ENTIRE United States to try to turn every state legislature blood red in order to control the Senate. They don't have that kind of drive. A second way they could do this is to lobby the hell out of the state legislatures and try to corrupt the system as much as possible -- the whole reason the 17th Amendment was passed and ratified in the first place.
For a movement so hellbent on returning the government back to the people, it seems mighty suspicious that they would take a very large portion of the government directly away from the people. It proves how moronic and disjointed their message (or lack thereof) is. Get a grip, go back to 3rd grade (lern maff n spalling), and try not to sound so oxymoronic, okay Tea Partiers? Thanks.
Sources:
1 http://topics.law.cornell.edu/...
2 http://www.usconstitution.net/...
3 http://www.usconstitution.net/...
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/...
5 http://en.wikipedia.org/...
6 http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
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Update 1
Updated to correct my math (thanks to Wayward Son for pointing that out) because when you make fun of teabaggers who can't do math, you wind up with a little public embarrassment to wake you up on a Friday. :P Also updated for the obligatory "thank you!" for the rec list! Thanks for helping get the word out on how stupid this repeal movement is.