Paul Ryan: De-facto Republican Party leader slams Donald Trump for urging 'shutdown' of Muslims entering US

Mr Ryan is second in line to the presidency and thus the de facto leader of the Republican party

Paul Ryan speaks to the media about Donald Trump's comments, in Washington (EPA)

In an extraordinary departure from political etiquette, the top leadership of the Republican Party denounced its own presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, for urging a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States in the wake of the San Bernardino mass shooting.

As criticism rained down on Mr Trump from many quarters, including from most of his rivals for the Republican nod, it was the decision by the House Speaker Paul Ryan to scold him publicly that stood out. As Speaker, Mr Ryan is second in line to the presidency and thus the de facto leader of his party for the time being. He also carries heft as the vice-presidential candidate in 2012.

Mr Ryan’s comments, made during a press conference on Capitol Hill which was devoted to discussing steps that the US Congress is taking to toughen the screening of foreigners coming to the US, echoed those made by others in the party, including the former Vice-President Dick Cheney, not usually a moderating force.

Mr Ryan said commenting on the party’s struggle to find a nominee would normally be inappropriate for the Speaker. “I will make an exception,” he said, adding that the comments made by Mr Trump were “not who we are as a party or as a country…This is not conservativism... Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islam terror are Muslims.”

It was notable that Mr Trump issued his incendiary proposal late on Monday, hours after a new poll from Iowa, which will kick off the state-by-state process of picking party nominees with caucus voting on 1 February, showed him slipping into second place behind Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. If it was his calculation that issuing the statement would return the focus to his campaign, he was not wrong.

That statement said, in part, that he wanted, “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”. It was made in response to the shootings of 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last week, carried out by a married couple, who had become radicalised.

Mr Trump continued to defend his proposal yesterday, although he said American Muslims who had left the country for a trip would be allowed back in. He repeatedly insisted that the US was “at war” with radical Muslims committed to jihad and that the step was no more severe than those taken by Franklin Roosevelt at the start of Second World War. He would not support the internment of anyone as Mr Roosevelt had done, he added.

The latest of a series of garish balloons of varying degrees of offensiveness released by Mr Trump, this episode more than any other will stoke fears inside the party that unless he is brought to heel he will wreck its brand and its chances of winning back the White House, whether he is the nominee or not.

A new survey by the Marist organisation released this week for MSNBC showed 58 per cent of American adults believing Mr Trump is harming the image of his own party. “That somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in,” Mr Cheney told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio broadcaster. “Religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we come from.”

Mr Trump’s rivals were caught between denouncing him and not wanting to alienate his still very numerous supporters. Mr Cruz said he did not agree with the plan to reject Muslims at the border but commended Mr Trump for “standing up and focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders”.