The host of a conservative talk radio station in Raleigh was debating term limits on a recent afternoon with a guest who opposed them. Most of the callers predictably endorsed the idea to get of what they called "career politicians," though when you press them on it they usually mean liberals who have been in office for a while, not conservatives.

Two callers said they didn't favor term limits and they weren't progressives worried about turning over more power to lobbyists and special interests. They said they opposed them because they were strict constitutionalists and term limits are not in the constitution.

One of the callers then said she hoped the guest would agree with her that the 17^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution that provides for the election of Senators by popular vote needs to be repealed and state legislatures should choose our Senators as the Constitution originally mandated.

The guest seemed taken aback by the question and asked the caller directly if she was saying she wanted to give up her right to vote for the two people who represent her in the U.S. Senate. She said that's exactly what she meant because she believed in the original Constitution.

And it's not just callers to conservative stations. Ken Buck, the Republican candidate for Senate in Colorado and tea party favorite, is taking heat for comments he made in a campaign speech last year endorsing the idea of ending the direct election of Senators.

Both Republican candidates for a Congressional seat in Louisiana endorsed repealing the 17^th amendment in a debate last week and the idea keeps popping up at tea parties.

And it's not the only amendment under attack. Republican leaders in Congress including House Minority Leader John Boehner are now questioning the 14^th amendment that grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

That move is clearly pandering to anti-immigrant zealots and their inaccurate claims about children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents, children the right-wingers offensively call anchor babies.

But it makes you wonder what other amendments the people who define themselves as constitutionalists or the politicians who pander to them would like to repeal. Let's put aside the Bill of Rights, though it's made up of amendments after all and freedom of religion is not exactly in vogue for many on the right when it comes to the rights of people they want to scapegoat, notably people of the Muslim faith.

But does that mean that the other 17 of them are fair game and need to go, like the 13^th amendment that banned slavery or the 24^th that prohibits a poll tax to be used to keep people from voting?

All the talk about abolishing amendments and taking away rights comes as many celebrate the 90^th anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th amendment in 1920 that gave women the right to vote.

Repealing that might make it tough for female candidates to run, if they are not eligible to vote, but it wasn't in the original constitution after all.

Ridiculous of course, but you would have said the same thing two years ago about people treated as legitimate candidates trying to take away everybody's right to vote for their Senators. The tea parties are pushing the extremists into the mainstream. Once they get there, who knows how far they will go.