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I tend to think this should probably not be done. 

On the plus side, there is the simplification of code
(saving approx 80 lines and eliminating an entire class of
objects).  Also, there is the modest speed-up.

On the minus side, it is rather late to be making big
changes to the module.

More importantly, I'm concerned about inlining _WorkRep's
internals.  Nick's use of Python ints as a temporary
representation is currently confined to _WorkRep.  That
choice was not the right way to go in the long term.  While
it saves time for the Python implementation, a C version
would go back to the method of shuffling bcd digits directly
(giving better big O performance and eliminating an
intermodule code dependency). 

The elimination of prec in the _fixexponents call is okay. 
Also, the max() call is fine.