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Has it been considered that Padme's death was meant to be solely metaphorical, in that her death occurs just as the greater Republic looses its will for democracy and destroys it?

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Qui-gon's use of the machine to check Anakin's blood for a Midi count demonstrates the general Star Wars motif of nature vs. machine. The Jedi were trying to explain the Force through science, but Midi's are merely a small element of it all. The Midi counts never mattered in the end because all it took for Luke to win was his rejection of aggression, and his compassion for his Father. Force powers became irrelevent.

Think of where Yoda lives during the PT, Coruscant, center of technology, and then in the OT he has moved to a planet brimming with life, away from it all.

This is the whole reason for their diminishing use of the Force, and their subsequent downfall. They viewed themselves too scientifically, and lost the their connection with the Living Force. They were servents of the Republic not to the Force. But once Yoda experiences his failure in ROTS, he'll unlearn what he has learned, and become that mystical figure as seen in ESB.

The story that GL is telling the in the PT is how the Republic became the Empire. It cannot do so unless it has very serious flaws as you, Helana, have pointed out. It is corrupt, businesses and corporations have too much power, and everyone has become complacent. This is a sign of a decaying system of government that Palps is able to exploit. You seem to want it the other way around; the Republic is a well functioning system that gets conqured by an outside force; which is fine, but in my opinion I find it far more interesting to see the Republic give into its fear over security and willingly let a tyrannical leader come to power.

As for the Republic having no army; the Republic resembles a one world government. Each planet has its own security force to keep order on its planet, but the Republic itself doesn't keep its own standing army. This is because just about the entire galaxy is part of the Repbulic save for the few weak outer rim planets (Tattoine for example). There are no major exterior threats. Take the US for example, each state has a police force to control what happens in its borders, but it doesn't need a large standing army to control each state, the standing army is used for external problems caused by other countries.

As far as the Trade Federation in concerned; it came as a suprise to Obi-Wan in TPM that the Federation had an "invasion army." But the problems the Republic faced in the PT has nothing to do with having no army, because afterall, it was the creation of the Grand Army of clones that was the undoing of the Republic. The crisis with the TF in TPM was just a smoke screen used by Palps to get power. The TF posed no threat to the Republic because it was a corporation that made money within the Republic; if the Republic used an army to crush the TF, how would it prevent the real dangerous issue - stopping the system from decaying, allowing people like Palps to gain power?

the Yoda I know from ESB would've been above all that. In his mind the Republic doesn't matter, only the ways of the Force.

Well of course, Yoda learned from the mistakes he made in the PT. It is clear that the Republic and the Jedi are dysfunctional, even Yoda admits that the Jedi are arrogant and too sure in their ways. The Jedi and the Republic wouldn't have crumbled if they didn't have any weaknesses.