I don’t know any Tea Party people involved in this crank notion. I can tell you that there was a movement recently in my state legislature to try to remove our right to vote on our Senators, and it went over like a lead balloon. Conservatives know that placing elections in the hands of these politicians means perpetual empowerment of the elites at the expense of the people.
If the Senate represents “The People” rather than the States, then why should we even have a Senate. The House is supposed to represent “The People” and that is why we always had direct elections for the House. If the Senate also represents “The People”, then the Senste is a redundant bastard child that doubles the opportunity for crony corruption.
Would you favor an amendment eliminating the Senate altogether?
The anti-17thers are extremely outspoken and would have us believe that trusting big government to appoint politicians for us is the "true conservative" position and one that the "tea party" embraces, but it's interesting how they NEVER poll grassroot conservatives and tea party members to gauge the level of support for it.
I think they probably fear what most of us suspect would be the results... you'd get around 20-25% of conservatives to endorse the idea, and the 60-70% or more opposed (with everyone else "undecided"). They can't sell people on this kool-aid, so they just run around screaming that you have to agree with Mark Levin on everything or you're a liberal RINO progressive Woodrow Wilson fan who "hates the constitution" and "doesn't understand the founders".
I see a similar attitude with the "only allow creationism in public schools" crowd. They'd you believe that they speak for conservatives as a whole, but their viewpoint is actually opposed by most conservatives and it only seems more popular than it is because they're screaming about it constantly and demanding everyone else accept their worldview.
There are other such fringe positions around (there are numerous Christian conservatives who still believe alcohol is the root of all evil and the prohibition should be re-instated, for example). The difference is, they're not running around on talk radio and yelling at the top of their lungs that they speak for the Tea Party, so we don't have to worry about them embarrassing us.