I would say that it's better to have the route go away and let the user know about it than to throw data into the bit bucket.

Static routes shouldn't go away. It was a cheap shot to help people who can't configure dynamic routing properly.

Maybe we could compromise on an option to leave the route there when the circuit goes down,

It has to be default to take any effect on global routing flap. Non-default options aren't used by those without a clue; and it is precisely netadmins whith no clue whose networks do most harm to the Internet.

for those network managers who want to receive calls from users saying "My data went into the bit bucket" and then spend some time to figure out that it's because the circuit went down.

Those "managers" got to fix their routing, ok? --vadim