It might be more Republican at present, but how’d you like a Senate full of country clubber big gubmint accommodationists ? That’s what you’d have. Ted Cruz ? Nope. Kentucky would’ve been sending Democrats, because the KY House is still majority Democrat. No Rand Paul but those typical Southern-fried “fake” Conservative Democrats of the Manchin (or worse) vintage... if not Robert Byrd.
Of course, you being a Virginian, I can understand your frustration having a GOP legislature with two execrable urban leftist Democrat Senators and that the 17th would stop that dead in its tracks. Problem is, again, you’d have John Warner types or more like my 2 Senators in TN, the epitome of the party establishment (and those two would be easily elected by the state legislature, no question, though we would not have had a GOP Senator elected from the 1870s until 2009 with the 17th repeal — and you guys wouldn’t have had them from the Readjuster period until the ‘90s).
It is not a zero sum game. If the 17th were repealed then state politics would get the attention it deserves, most people don’t even know the name of the state representative. Repealing the 17th would change that if that state rep was selecting your US Senator.