On her show Wednesday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained that Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock was not isolated in his view that victims of rape should be forced to give birth if they become pregnant.

The Republican candidate created an uproar on Tuesday night after he said that a pregnancy was a gift from God even in cases of rape and that the pregnancy was “something that God intended to happen.” Romney had endorsed Mourdock only the day before and recorded an advertisement personally encouraging voters to support him.

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Maddow joked that Mourdock was his own October surprise. But the liberal MSNBC host noted that Mourdock was not alone in his views.

“It is days like this on the campaign trail when it is never more clear that this is not the next national election after 2008 — this is the next national election after 2010, which is the election where the Republican Party not only did great… they ran five different candidates for the United States Senate that year, who blew through what was previously even the anti-abortion movement’s rough consensus that even if you did want to make abortion a criminal offense in America, you would at least not force that government decision on women who got pregnant through rape or incest,” Maddow said.

Maddow noted that Republican candidates Rick Berg, Michael Baumgartner, Pete Hoekstra, Tom Smith, Todd Akin and Josh Mandel also believed that abortion should be prohibited any exception for rape.

“It is because of what happened to the Republican Party in the tea party era that what previously would have been seen as disqualifying extremism on the issue of abortion is now normal in Republican Party politics,” she said.

Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:

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