And that is an extremist position shared by a microscopic percentage of Americans, most of whom are not willing to let socialist and totalitarian measures creep into complete control of the nation, while radical pro-lifers celebrate the "victories" they achieve by compromising any and every other issue on grounds of its "practical insignificance".
The author is totally missing the mark when he says "pro-lifers are the GOP’s useful idiots". They (meaning the extremists) are the Democratic Party's useful idiots, who keep scaring big chunks of the voting population into voting Democrat in spite of distaste over its socialist bent, and a big part of the reason why the socialist Democratic Party is able to keep pushing the GOP further and further into socialism, to the point where we can't even discern a difference in goverment spending levels when Republicans vs Democrats are in power. The GOP knows it can pass trillions of dollars of new tax-and-restribute schemes (i.e. buy votes), without losing a single one of the extreme pro-life voters.
IMO, that is why John McCain was the GOP nominee: the conservative base was split when Huckabee assumed the 'purist' role and the rest of the field was split among Romney, Thompson, Rudy, etc. This left the opening for the 'moderate' RINOs and crossover Rats to determine our candidate in the early primaries.