Exactly one year ago, Senate Republicans were positively giddy going into the 2010 end-of-the year holiday break. The first GOP Senate Majority in modern times! The first female Senate Majority Leader in state history! The best top staff available in Cullen Sheehan and Michael Brodkorb!

Sometimes you just have to shout and swear at the same time:

WHAT IN THE HELL HAPPENED?

In 2011, we had the predictable and stale stand-off on no new taxes. The GOP was never going to give Gov. Mark Dayton any tax increase. The public debate among the state leadership triumvirate — Dayton, Sen. Maj. Leader Amy Koch and Speaker Kurt Zellers — seemed to be mostly respectful.

Koch made her first big leadership mark early in the year by saying she and the Republicans planned to “focus like a laser on jobs and the budget.” Good stuff in a bad economy and big budget deficit era. So why did the Senate GOP shift gears and pass a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman?

Insider GOP lore has it that senior party godfathers believed putting multiple social issues on the ballot in 2012 would weaken the DFL in the 2012 election. The thinking was that DFL donors and activists would be forced to put their money and time into defeating the specific ballot measures, thus weakening the state DFL party. I buy that.

But what I don’t buy is that these same senior party godfathers (note the absence of godmothers) have a good sense of the current prevailing — and trending — political culture. Prevailing: People want the focus to be on jobs and the budget. [Koch was right.] Trending: The latest Star Tribune poll has the state about evenly split on the issue. Trending: Tolerance and support for gay marriage is being driven by younger generations, including younger Republicans.

Take GOP Rep. John Kreisel (Cottage Grove). The rock star, Purple Hearted, freshman legislator who lost both his legs in Iraq. He was born in 1982. Said Kreisel,

“I look at it as: We are all equal…It is not right. I can’t do it [vote to put the ban on the ballot]. I’m very upset about this vote. I don’t like it. I think it sends the wrong message. You live once in your life and I’ve learned that the hard way. You never know when it is going to be your time. People fight to find happiness…You find someone you love and now other people are saying because I don’t consider that normal, you can’t do it?”

Three other GOPers in the House voted against the amendment, too. They are Tim Kelly (Red Wing), Rich Murray (Albert Lea) and Steve Smith (Mound). That’s the merits. More on the politics…

Making a constitutional ban on gay marriage a signature GOP issue invited intense scrutiny. Any deviance becomes fair fodder in a hypocrisy charge.

But who could have possibly predicted a deviance comprised of  the nuclear bomb that is the first female GOP Senate Majority Leader having an affair with her top, rapidly partisan GOP staffer?

Wonderfully encapsulated in this joke: Question, what’s the GOP definition of marriage? Answer: One man, one woman and one staffer.

The affair

[For the lawyers. Koch resigned and then admitted to an “inappropriate relationship.” Two days after Koch resigned, Brodkorb was fired. I’m assuming -- like everyone else in town -- the inappropriate relationship was a romance with Brodkorb.]

On to the affair. Make that the alleged affair.

One has to assume that neither Koch nor Brodkorb could have possibly fathomed losing their jobs as a possible consequence. So much precedent in other politicians and their staffers, past and present!

The facts as we know them right now, in chronological order (which is not, and not inconsequentially, the same order we learned the facts):

September 21. Former chief of staff Cullen Sheehan first learns of the affair. At which time (ok, a day later) he reported it to Asst. Sen. Maj. Leader Geoff Michel. Koch was confronted and confirmed the relationship.

November ?. Sheehan leaves the caucus and takes a lobbying job with Lockridge Grindal.  [To date, Sheehan has not registered with the Campaign Finance Board. That's fine, he probably hasn't hasn't actually lobbied, yet, but it explains the lack of a date certain.]

December 14. Surprise meeting — “that lasted for hours” — at the Minneapolis Club for Koch with GOP Sens. Chris Gerlach, David Hann, Geoff Michel, and Claire Robling (the GOP Senate leadership team).

December 15. Meeting of the five at the December 14 meeting continues in Chanhassen.

Koch announces the stunning news that she is resigning after one year on the job. Doesn’t give a reason for leaving. Gets rave reviews from leadership in both political parties.

December 16. Hann, Michel & Senjem have a press conference. They gas on about Koch’s “inappropriate relationship.”

Brodkorb packs up his stuff and leaves the Capitol before midnight.

December 21. Sheehan tells his side of the story, including the fact that he took his knowledge of the alleged affair to Michel and then to Koch, back in September.

Michel admits his in-front-of-the-cameras statement that he first found out about the affair several weeks ago is a lie, and that the lie was intended to protect Sheehan’s identity.

Back to my assumption: Neither Koch nor Brodkorb contemplated losing their jobs. So, why did they?

One theory was drilled into my head by my late great father, “Never underestimate how dumb smart men can be when it’s their you-know-whats doing the thinking.” My amendment, “If we’ve come a long way, baby, then acting on below-the-belt thinking is part of the female DNA, too.”

Another theory goes, sure, many a DFLer have had affairs with the same dynamic — an elected official with a staffer under a direct report. But the times have changed. Now we have instantaneous disclosure of facts online. No definable news cycles. News via Twitter and Facebook, 24/7. Plus, Penn State happened. The long-time prevailing “don’t ask, don’t tell” maxim no longer applies to heterosexual affairs in public institutions.

Another theory is that issues like gambling and a new Vikings stadium caused some seriously Machiavellian maneuvering to get rid of players opposed to the book of clients paying one’s bills.

At this point in time, given the facts as we know them, I’m thinking it’s a combination of all the theories, plus a dose of sexism (see below) that caused the conflagration that escalated into the nuclear bomb.

BUT, you can bet your bottom dollar that operatives in the gambling / new Vikings stadium playground had more to do with fanning the fires than the facts currently in the public domain would imply.

Much more to follow in the coming days.

The sexisim

Here’s what first really got my goat, and it’s what I first put on Facebook:

Two elected women. One is the GOP Senate Majority Leader, who, as best we know the facts at this point, resigned her post because she was having an affair with a male staffer who reported to her. Male staffer also has to leave his job.

The other woman is a DFL Member of Congress who also had a long-time affair (and maybe still is having?) with a male staffer who reports to her. Both the Member of Congress and the male staffer still have their jobs.

Can someone explain why there are two such different outcomes for basically the same set of facts?

When the comments started rocking, with smart analysis by people of all political stripes, I knew I’d hit a chord.

Sexism? Yes. There’s the prima facie case of the first female Senate Majority Leader being done in over an affair; the long, strong tradition of men not losing their jobs over same. It’s a testament to how Amy Koch did the work of being the Senate’s first female Majority Leader that so many well-known feminist DFLers have commented on this publicly, along with all those I’ve heard from privately.

Small consolation prize, Amy Koch, but there you go.

Then there’s the most awkward demonstration of sexism we’ve witnessed in years: The December 16 press conference in which the pale, drawn faces of three GOP Sen. men — Hann, Michel and Senjem — gas on lamenting how difficult their female leader’s “inappropriate relationship” has been for them and for everyone.

I don’t know what’s worse. Either (A), it never occurred to the GOP boys how it might look for them to have that press conference without female colleagues present; or (B) they discussed it and ruled female participation as not necessary. Hilarious sidebar? That was their first big press conference without their fired communications director!

Finally, there’s the sexism that’s the real possibility here that lightning rod Brodkorb was the real target.

Maybe Amy Koch was collateral damage to Michael Brodkorb’s execution.

A final sidebar. Got to assume that not even in Brodkorb’s wildest dreams, did he ever expect to find himself dominating the front page of the Star Tribune, above the fold.

I end where I started.

WHAT IN THE HELL HAPPENED?!