It is undeniably good news that the House of Representatives passed an anti-TikTok bill last week by an immense majority. The legislation would force a divestment of the video app from its Chinese owners. It is an important step toward rooting out Chinese Communist Party spyware and cultural influence from American life.
In a moment of intense division, the overwhelming bipartisan support this bill received should inspire optimism. As retiring Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) said, “This is a common-sense measure to protect our national security.” Despite a year of chaos between and within the parties, this bill proves members can come together to address national security threats when they loom large enough.
The House’s unity on this bill, however, stands in stark contrast to inaction on other pressing national security issues. Extreme factions in both parties have embraced a renewed isolationism, and Republican and Democratic leaders alike are petrified by these groups’ influence. But extremists do not speak for the vast body of Americans. Members should use the growing momentum to push forward with other national security priorities before the 118th Congress ends, including passing the supplemental spending bills to support Ukraine and Israel.
The scale of the national security threat America faces cannot be overstated. Just last Tuesday, China, Iran, and Russia began a series of joint naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman. This emerging Eurasian axis is cooperating to take advantage of Western weakness, and yet it seems the parties in Congress cannot get their act together to pass a supplemental spending bill to support our allies in Ukraine and Israel.
A cross-party coalition of the sane must emerge to tackle these threats. If Republicans and Democrats can work with each other to act against TikTok, surely they can put aside partisan differences to address America’s shipbuilding crisis or our inability to produce enough missiles to resupply stockpiles. Rearming the United States and our allies for the coming conflict should not be a partisan issue.
Unfortunately, President Joe Biden and a number of prominent Democrats have been attempting to use national security topics to alienate Republicans from centrist voters. They believe they can negatively polarize the war in Ukraine and depict the Republican Party as some kind of unpatriotic collection of Russophiles. The kind of rhetoric leading Democrats have been deploying for months is designed to drive a wedge between the parties and animate the left-wing base.
Republican congressional leaders have, sadly, been playing into Biden’s hands. Until the passage of the TikTok bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) fumbled nearly every national security issue. In part, this is because Johnson wants to be seen as “fighting back” against the Democrats. But these unforced errors can also be ascribed to the fact that Johnson feels a desperate need to guard his rightward flank from criticism by the House Freedom Caucus.
The success of the TikTok bill, however, shows just how foolish it is to cater to isolationist factions that, in actuality, hold little real influence. Neither extreme faction on the Left or the Right was able to persuade a majority of their parties to join them in opposition to the bill.
Lawmakers who take the threats to our national security seriously should see this as an opportunity to draw sharp distinctions between themselves and their parties’ more reactionary elements. As Russell Kirk wrote in an essay later collected in Confessions of a Bohemian Tory: “To act intelligently, the conservative interest in this country must free itself from even the peripheral influence of intellectual freaks like Ayn Rand, from profiteers who thrive upon confusion and hatred, and from the absurd simplifiers who fancy calling everyone in Washington a Communist will make all things hunky-dory.”
Today, the Right and the Left alike must reject the influence of the intellectual freaks, profiteers, and absurd simplifiers among their ranks. The loudest voices are not the wisest. Extreme factions should not be allowed to set the direction for America’s major political parties — especially on questions of national security.
Congress is the perfect forum for drawing these kinds of lines. If this vote is any indication, most members understand the manifold threats America faces from foreign adversaries. They are in a unique position to put the national interest first and cooperate to address the terrifyingly real threats America faces.
But achieving that task will take more than party maneuvering in the Capitol. Members must also boldly make the argument for American engagement to their constituents this election. Senators and representatives concerned about national security need to put in the work on the campaign trail to convince the public to send them back to Washington with a mandate to implement more commonsense policies after the spirit of this TikTok bill.
Only this kind of popular assent will silence the extreme isolationists. Congress exists to represent the will of the people, but the parties are doing a terrible job at shaping that will. The TikTok bill is a glimmer of hope — true statesmen would capitalize on it.
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Michael Lucchese is a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund and the founder of Pipe Creek Consulting.
