Politics & Power Quote by Virgil Goode

Momentum is the real message here: not policy, not principle, but the claim of an irresistible tide. Goode’s line is built like a press release that wants to sound like a thermometer reading. By framing border anxiety as something the “American public” is “continu[ing] to focus more intensely” on, he smuggles in a premise: the public’s attention is both unified and steadily escalating. That’s persuasive because it makes dissent feel like denial of reality rather than disagreement about values or evidence.

The second half completes the feedback loop. The “continues to grow” caucus isn’t presented as a political faction hustling for leverage; it’s portrayed as the natural institutional response to a civic demand. It’s a classic legitimacy transfer: public concern confers moral authority, and the caucus’s growth then retroactively “proves” the public concern is justified. The structure turns politics into inevitability.

The subtext is also about branding. “Illegal immigration” and “securing the nation’s borders” are paired to collapse a messy set of issues (labor markets, asylum law, demographics, policing) into a single, security-coded priority. “Reform” in the caucus name does additional work, laundering a hardline posture in the language of improvement and solutions.

Context matters: this kind of phrasing thrives in moments when immigration becomes a proxy for broader unease - cultural change, economic precarity, post-9/11 security politics. Goode isn’t arguing a case so much as certifying a climate, and inviting colleagues to join the winning side of it.