The deadly attacks in Paris last week, followed by the second Democratic primary debate over the weekend, reignited a Republican obsession, unique to the Obama era, with the claim that U.S. leaders can’t defeat jihadi terrorism unless they identify the perpetrators with highly prescriptive language.

This obsession arose after the George W. Bush presidency precisely because Bush and his security advisers recognized the humane and strategic value in avoiding anti-Muslim incitement. As a Republican, Bush was able to mostly keep a lid on the kind of rhetoric his party now espouses unapologetically.

Republicans specifically claim, without a shred of evidence, that referring to ISIS fighters as “radical Islamic terrorists” isn’t just nomenclature, but a strategic prerequisite to vanquishing them.

Their preferred rhetoric serves two purposes, one the flip-side of the other. By adopting a label that implies a dogmatic link between Islam and violent extremism, they play to the U.S. public’s broad suspicion of and antipathy to Islam; and by insisting on a label they know responsible stewards of U.S. national security will reject, they can cow Democrats as weak-on-terror agents of political correctness.

In reality, Democratic unease with this language is almost entirely a function of strategic, rather than empathic, thinking—a reflection of the greater seriousness with which the party treats national security and foreign affairs than Republicans. And the most shameless thing about it is that many Republicans understand the objection at a deeply personal level. Their nomenclature wouldn’t survive even one Presidential Daily Brief. But they’re happy to set that all aside for immediate political expediency.