What have Republicans recently done for our republic? Where is your nonsense about corrupt state assemblymen?
What? No, the Senate is supposed to be representative of the States themselves, not the people of those States — the people are already represented via the Representatives. Moving the selection/appointment of Senator from the State to the people thereof makes the States themselves impotent in the federal system, thereby making the States into mere extensions of the FedGov (which is why there's been so little blowback against some truly horrendous actions in the Federal government); consider, for example, the evil of incorporation:
What we have in incorporation is the ability of the court to take the Constitution, apply some magical transformation, and then use that to constrain the States - a prime example being the 1st Amendment, by incorperating it against the States the courts magically transform 'Congress' to mean 'legislature' and then apply that to the states. In so doing they become not Judges, but lawgivers [a legislature in itself].
This usurpation is of course the seed which grew into Roe v. Wade where the USSC repealed all States's abilities to govern their own citizens [the unborn].