It was a suggestion...
...but I have deep reservations, along the lines you expressed. It'd be a gamble to remove the safety valve, in effect removing any margin for error. But since the suggestion was made, I thought I'd toss it into the mix.
DarthYeti has the right focus: CE is the problem board. Yet it's also as strong a board, in its own way, as Space is in its way. The clientele of the boards largely overlaps, but not completely, which means that there are people who'd probably leave without CE. Shutting down CE doesn't seem like the right answer, to me. It needs reform, not execution.