Republicans could face same problem with new leader following the movement Donald Trump has spawned

Donald Trump’s Republican rivals in the White House race are lining up to condemn his candidacy after his call to exclude Muslims from America, but even if he were to exit the race, the movement he’s spawned may now simply be waiting for another leader, and one could even be emerging already.

Fellow candidate Senator Ted Cruz, a staunch supporter of the Tea Party’s far-right agenda, has been careful not to speak out against Trump or his supporters so it’s probably no accident that he’s now surged ahead of Trump in a new poll in Iowa, which holds the first-in-the-nation vote to pick the party’s candidate in seven weeks time.

Just hours before Trump made his explosive “policy statement” on the ban because he charged there was “great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population”, the poll released by Monmouth University showed Cruz at 24% to Trump’s 19% among Iowa voters.