The MA GOP is a dead party, so electing more of them to the point of having any say in how things are run would be, as it stands now, next to impossible. The people love their corrupt local pols and won’t vote them out. I’d bet there is an excellent chance that Brown’s State Senate seat will go rodent, making it only 4 seats away from a 100% Democrat-controlled body.
Thanks to the 17th, you at least had the people able to send at least 1 Senator from the GOP (not that he was a prize) until 1979. If it had been repealed, the last Republican Senator elected would’ve been in 1954. From 1959 onward, all Democrat. Maine, which still has a decent amount of GOP legislators, albeit not a majority, would be sending deranged Socialist moonbats like Chellie Pingree instead of the twins.
This is not an argument to say we shouldn’t work on changing the legislative makeup of the bodies, because we absolutely should, only that for all those that think repealing the 17th would result in better Senators, you’re in for a shock. They’d be even worse than now. Many parts of the South would still be sending 2 Democrats from each state, corrupt puppets of party lobbyists and legislative leaders (KY, AR, NC, MS, AL & LA), even TN would still be sending 1 Democrat (probably Gore himself).
” ... repealing the 17th would result in better Senators, you’re in for a shock. They’d be even worse than now. ...”
I agree. Not only that, I am very optimistic about a bright future of well informed voters. A wall between them and senators in the flowering Information Age would be a disastrous mistake.