U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock is counting on the next week – which culminates with the Nov. 6 election tabulations – as being better than the last.

“Yeah, it was a tough week, but guess what, we bounced back,” Mourdock said Tuesday at the Allen County Republican Party’s annual Bean Dinner.

The Republican state treasurer was referring to the national furor over his remark, during an Oct. 23 debate with Democratic rival Joe Donnelly, that pregnancy resulting from rape “is something that God intended to happen.”

State Sen. David Long of Fort Wayne brought up the matter when introducing Mourdock to 520 people at Ceruti’s Summit Park. Mourdock’s remark was “taken out of context” by Democrats and “misconstrued by the national media,” Long said.

“No one, no one, who has read his comments believes that Richard was saying anything other than he believes that life begins at conception, and that once that occurs, every life is precious,” said the Indiana Senate president pro tem, producing applause from the partisan crowd.

Except for a quip about speaking with clarity – “because I always do that” – Mourdock preferred to talk about prospects for Republicans to win back the White House and the Senate while maintaining their majority in the U.S. House.

“It is about whether America gets back on a track to re-establish that wonderful trait that American historians call American exceptionalism or whether we go the intended direction of Barack Obama toward his European socialist model of France and Italy and Greece, and of course how’s it workin’ for them. That’s what’s at stake,” he said.

Later, Mourdock said, “This race to control the Senate is about more than Mourdock and more than Donnelly; it’s about the future of this country.”

Just as his parents are part of the “greatest generation” that won World War II, Mourdock said he and Republicans at the Bean Dinner must “accept the label of the courageous generation” to reduce the federal $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit and the $16 trillion national debt.

Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-3rd, spoke at the dinner about a “new generation of unafraid modern conservatives” and said that “from birth control to Big Bird, Democrats are stuck in the failed policies of the ’60s and ’70s.” He apparently was referring to federal funding for the Public Broadcasting Corp. and a government rule requiring employers and their insurers to cover contraceptives.

Gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence repeated his frequent vow to take Indiana “from good to great” by cutting taxes and freezing business regulations.

Pence faces Democrat John Gregg in next week’s election, and Stutzman is being challenged by Democrat Kevin Boyd. Libertarian candidates are running in the gubernatorial and Senate races.

Republicans paid $65 each to attend the Bean Dinner. About 200 of them paid $175 more to attend an earlier reception with Pence, Stutzman and Mourdock.

Mourdock is scheduled to speak today to a Fort Wayne Business Forum luncheon at the Fort Wayne Country Club. Donnelly and Gregg will visit West End Restaurant in Decatur at noon as part of their “Workhorse Bus Tour.”

bfrancisco@jg.net