Obama for America press secretary Ben LaBolt really seems to think he’s hit on a searing indictment of Republicans by using CTRL-F on transcripts of GOP presidential debates and not finding the words “middle class.”

“Once again, through all of the rhetoric, Republicans don’t mention the middle class,” he Tweeted during the debate.

Last week he told the Wall Street Journal, “The Republican candidates have now had three debates, and with tens of thousands of words exchanged in those debates they didn’t mention the middle class a single time.”

First, he’s flat wrong. From the last debate, while discussing manufacturing jobs, Rick Santorum said:

When I grew up in Butler, Pennsylvania, a little steel town, 21 percent of the people of this country worked in manufacturing. It is now nine. If you want to know where the middle of America went, it went to China, it went to Malaysia, it went to Indonesia.

As there is no gaping hole in the center of the country, we can presume Santorum was not speaking geographically.

Second, Republican candidates talked at great length about the economic worries of the middle class, even if they didn’t use that phrase directly.

Mitt Romney said:

Almost every action [Obama] took made it harder for entrepreneurs to build businesses, for banks to make loans, for businesses to hire, and to build more capital. What needs to be done — there are really seven things that come to mind. One is to make sure our corporate tax rates are competitive with other nations. Number two is to make sure that our regulations and bureaucracy works not just for the bureaucrats in Washington, but for the businesses that are trying to grow. Number three is to have trade policies that work for us, not just for our opponents. Number four is to have an energy policy that gets us energy secure. Number five is to have the rule of law. Six, great institutions that build human capital, because capitalism is also about people, not just capital and physical goods. And number seven is to have a government that doesn’t spend more money than it takes in.

Jon Huntsman said:

We don’t make things anymore in this country. We need to start making things in this country. And in order to do that, we need serious regulatory reform, not just repealing Obamacare, but ending the EPA’s regulatory reign of terror. We need to create a more competitive environment that speaks to real tax reform, that allows our entrepreneurs and businesses to step up and get it done and expand our economic base and create jobs.

Tim Pawlenty has since departed the race, but in the second debate, in New Hampshire, he said:

I understand what it’s like to see the blue-collar communities and the struggles that they’ve had when manufacturing leaves. So I’ve seen that firsthand. But number one, we’ve got to have fair trade, and what’s going on right now is not fair. I’m for a fair and open trade but I’m not for being stupid and I’m not for being a chump. And we have individuals and organizations and countries around this world who are not following the rules when it comes to fair trade. We need a stronger president and somebody who’s going to take on those issues. Number two, we need to make the costs and burdens of manufacturing in this country lower. We’re asking them to climb the mountain with a big backsack full of rocks on their back. We have to take the rocks out. One of them is Obamacare. I mean somebody in Arizona the other day. He’s moving his whole company out of the country just because of Obamacare. The taxes are too high. The regulations are too heavy, the permitting is too slow, and the message everywhere around this country, from business leaders large and small, including manufacturing, is get the government off my back. As president I will.

In that same debate, Michele Bachmann declared:

The United States federal government and the states have done numerous job training programs over the year with mixed results. This is what we need to do to turn job creation around and bring manufacturing back to the United States. What we need to do is today the United States has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. I’m a former federal tax lawyer. I’ve seen the devastation. We’ve got to bring that tax rate down substantially so that we’re among the lowest in the industrialized world. Here’s the other thing. Every time the liberals get into office, they pass an omnibus bill of big spending projects. What we need to do is pass the mother of all repeal bills, but it’s the repeal bill that will get a job killing regulations. And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America.

Third, while candidates have a certain ability to offer their thoughts on a variety of topics, they are partially limited by the questions asked and time limits imposed by the moderator. It’s hard to lay out a plan to bring prosperity back to the middle class in a 60-second window or when you’re asked, “Dancing with the Stars or American Idol?”

Fourth, of course the phrase “middle class” didn’t appear much in the transcript of a Republican debate; this is the party that doesn’t live and breathe class warfare, and these are the aspiring presidents who don’t think their role is to divide America up by net worth and income and take from those they deem too lucky or prosperous and give to others they have deemed, in the infinite wisdom that can only be found in a politician, to be more worthy.