Mike Huckabee's win in Iowa pulls the GOP as far to the extreme right as it has ever been. He coalesced 46% of the Iowa Republican caucus goers that are evangelicals with ads that openly promoted his faith and interviews that questioned Mitt Romney's Mormonism. The 40% of Iowa GOP voters who do not identify as evangelical only gave Huckabee 14% of their votes.

Theological questions have never been so much a part of a presidential election, not even in Kennedy's 1960 race, and the first voters in the nation chose a candidate that would rewrite the Constitution to impose his belief that life begins at conception, thus taking rights away from women and jeopardizing contraception. Americans just tuning into the election may not see Huckabee's extremism, but the base voters who propelled him to victory do, seeing him as the logical heir to George W. Bush and the strategies used by political guru Karl Rove that divided the nation along social and cultural lines.

Watching Huckabee's rise over the past few weeks, I wondered if his "I'm conservative, I'm just not angry about it" approach might mean more common ground, even where strong disagreements lingered on social issues, because he shunned the vitriol that defined much of the far right. But his campaign in the final weeks tilted further right, closing his campaign with a predictable and dishonest ad on abortion, and claiming victory declaring "the greatest generation is the one waiting to be born."

The GOP's generational drift rightward has reached its logical end, a front runner who would divide the nation along religious lines and impose his narrow values on all Americans. Instead of preaching unity and bringing the nation together, Huckabee's victory is a genuflect to the most narrow ideas in the GOP. A few thousand Iowa Republicans have laid a marker within an already divided national party, and will likely be checked by New Hampshire Republicans more interested in economics and pursuing truly conservative principles that get the government out of people's personal lives.

Can a party divided stand? Can a more moderate candidate like John McCain come from behind to beat Huckabee and expect to have the passion of the social conservative voters in a general election, if the epitome of their theocratic movement is not awarded the nomination?

Huckabee's win will mask a slide in the polls following several missteps he made on international policy in the past two weeks as the scrutiny of him intensified. Money has not been as important to Huckabee as has his spirited campaign and the promise it holds for social conservatives, able to rely on heavily evangelical Iowa churches for ground troops.

The GOP race still includes other candidates -- a very disappointed Mitt Romney who outspent Huckabee 15:1 in Iowa; a deflated Ron Paul whose insurgent campaign fell flat and can hardly expect to do much better with McCain resurgent in New Hampshire. Rumors of Fred Thompson preparing to drop out and support McCain only serve to underscore the schism within the GOP, between social conservatives who believe they have a bona fide leader in Huckabee, and the traditional parts of the GOP that are coming home to John McCain's candidacy.

New Hampshire is McCain terrioty, South Carolina Huckabee-land, Michigan holds some promise for Romney and Giuliani still believes the election doesn't start until February 5.

The path to the GOP nomination is less clear after Iowa than it was before, but one thing is certain, it is a party out of touch with an electorate looking for unity in the nation. They must find it within their party before they can offer it to hungry voters.