There’s a faithful remnant among conservatives that continue to agitate for repeal of the 17th Amendment, allowing the direct election of U.S. senators. They claim that the amendment undermines federalism and that returning to the original method for picking senators — selection by state legislatures — would reinforce states’ rights.
The anti-17th Amendment folks pop up occasionally. The most recent example was a commentator trying to glom on to the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision and argue it would be another step towards good government.
The chances of the 17th Amendment going away are about as realistic as the survival of a Joe Biden ice cream cone in certain warm eschatological places. There is no way you get to repeal. There is no way 290 congressmen and 67 senators will be marshalled to do that. The alternate is trying through state conventions. In either instance, 13 states not ratifying the amendment will be enough to defeat it. Right now, I can give you at least 14 that would never ratify it: Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, and Hawaii. So, why flail a dead horse?
And why write about it? Because conservatives have great skill in going down dead-end rabbit holes over pure conservative theory that throw life lines to their opponents who are otherwise floundering amidst real political issues.
2024 is about immigration, inflation, wokeism, Joe Biden’s record and fitness to continue serving. Conservatives need to stay laser-focused on those five things, not on Pied Piper schemes from the storehouse of conservative sugar plums.
But, you say, isn’t is true that the 17th Amendment has undermined federalism? Yes, it probably did. But there are some things about which there is no turning the clock back, at least not 111 years. Robert Bork gave us a good example during his Senate confirmation hearings. Discussing the Legal Tender Cases — 1871 Supreme Court decisions upholding the constitutionality of paper money instead of gold or silver — Bork suggested that, yes, the Founding Fathers would have never considered paper money instead of “hard” currency constitutional. But any judge who thought that was doable needed a white jacket with wraparound sleeves rather than a black robe. That horse left the barn 153 years ago. The Senate mare followed 111 years ago.
Conservatives need to focus on real issues connected to federalism. Federalism today is most endangered by efforts to undermine the Electoral College. There have been decades-long unsuccessful efforts to eliminate the Electoral College by constitutional amendment. Those efforts have failed because too many “flyover” states, which would become political no man’s land under a direct election scheme, would never ratify such an amendment.
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