After caving on the coal plant issue, Kansas&#8217; new governor, Mark Parkinson, promises even more surprises in the days ahead.</p><p>Boy howdy! Can hardly wait to see what&#8217;s coming!</p><p>Evolution back up for debate? Don&#8217;t tell me: Phill Kline is getting a Cabinet post?</p><p>Going too far? Suppose you&#8217;re right. But if those surprises are anything like Monday&#8217;s reversal of the Sebelius administration&#8217;s two-year blockade of the western Kansas power plants, then we&#8217;re in for one heckuva sellout.</p><p>Principles drastically reduced! Political backbone, half off!</p><p>And here I used to deride Republican Bill Graves as Governor Get-Along for being overly willing to bend to the conservatives in his party.</p><p>This Parkinson guy, himself a former moderate Republican, could be even more of a noodle. Within days of taking over for fellow Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, he signals the GOP that he&#8217;s only too happy to turn over the governor&#8217;s mansion two years ahead of schedule.</p><p>&#8220;Today, Kansas took a big step backward,&#8221; the Sierra Club said after Parkinson announced that he&#8217;d approved one coal plant rather than two.</p><p>The face-saving part is that the deal is contingent on the Legislature requiring utilities to use more renewable energy. That&#8217;s a good thing, even if market forces are already moving that way.</p><p>But don&#8217;t forget that the one plant that Parkinson approved is targeted to pump out nearly two-thirds of the carbon emissions that the two plants combined would have put out.</p><p>All for a facility being built to provide power to states that wouldn&#8217;t allow its construction. Thus the search was on for a patsy. Found one!</p><p>Democratic Party leaders can&#8217;t say it out loud, but they can&#8217;t be happy with this mess.</p><p>Their new governor is a former Republican Party chairman whom Sebelius convinced to change parties and be her running mate.</p><p>But it turned out to be a flash in the pan when Parkinson announced recently that he wasn&#8217;t interested in running for governor in 2010.</p><p>That virtually ensures that a conservative Republican, most likely U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, will become the next elected governor. You couldn&#8217;t find three people at the grocery on coupon day who could name Democrats who might run.</p><p>Worse, Sebelius took off for Washington and left behind a caretaker successor who doesn&#8217;t care about the next election and whose first major act is to stab her and her supporters in the back.</p><p>No doubt many Democrats are cussing Parkinson for caving to pressure from the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Legislature.</p><p>But it&#8217;s not him they should scorn. Sebelius picked the guy. They should blame her.