The key moment in the whole Ti. Gracchus is saga is his going directly to the people with his land bill instead of filtering it first through the senate, as was customary. He was a well-connected aristocrat, with a consular father and a father-in-law as princeps senatus (speaker of the house, if you will) and could surely have made a powerful case (or had one made on his behalf) about the patriotic nature of his bill -- which was really perfectly reasonable (it only applied to publicland; it enforced an earlier law that people had just ignored; and it offered compensation for improvements made on reclaimed excess land).

But, for whatever reason, he decided to by-pass the senate and that is where the problems arose, it seems to me. The fact that after his death the land commission was allowed to carry out its work according to the Gracchan bill unmolested (indeed, funded by the senate) suggests that opposition to Ti. stemmed less from the contents of his bill than the nature of his political tactics. By-passing the senate was a colossal blunder on his part, and cost him his life.

I am very sympathetic to the view that the Republic was systemically ill-equipped to handle so vast a realm. A new order was needed. Most empires need an emperor!