For months, the Republican establishment has carefully dealt with Donald Trump and his in-your-face, shoot-from-the-lip presidential campaign that has sharply resonated with Americans.

On Tuesday it became a full-scale condemnation as GOP leaders and Trump’s GOP presidential competition tore into the billionaire developer over his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

“Freedom of religion is a fundamental constitutional principle. It’s a founding principle of this country,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said to reporters after emerging from a closed-door meeting with the Republican National Committee.

“This is not conservatism. What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for. And more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”

Trump, the runaway GOP presidential front-runner in poll after poll, sparked a furor when he said he favors a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States as a way to help stop terrorist attacks at home.

He likened the idea to President Franklin Roosevelt’s initiatives against people of German, Japanese and Italian descent during World War II, telling ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “We have no choice but to do this. We have people that want to blow up our buildings, our cities. We have figure out what’s going on.”

But Ryan as well as Trump’s competitors for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination — most of who have treated Trump with kid gloves so far — pulled those gloves off on Tuesday and went after him with bared fists.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been on the receiving end of some of Trump’s most acerbic insults tweeted:

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Source: Bill Hoffmann, http://www.newsmax.com