Rarely has the true face of the modern Republican party in America been exposed so obviously.

Just a day after President Barack Obama met with Republican leaders and came out talking of a new era of co-operation, Republican senators united around Mitch McConnell to sign a letter declaring they would pass no legislation without movement on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

That legislation they are willing to scupper includes extending unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans, still suffering the terrible hangover of the Great Recession. The tax cuts the Republicans are really fired up over will benefit only the top 2% of Americans.

To put it even more simply: Republican leaders are happy to go virtually on strike in order to win a tax cut worth billions of dollars for America's most wealthy people (which includes themselves and many of their top campaign donors). At the same time, they are willing to deny help to America's most vulnerable; standing by as once middle-class people lose their homes as their benefits disappear.

The hypocrisy is staggering and almost beyond belief. One of the arguments the Republicans continually use to justify cutting jobless benefits is that America cannot afford such largesse because it would inflate the deficit. Too bad, they say, but these are tough times and you just have to grit your teeth and take the pain to get the nation's fiscal house in order.

Yet, that very same deficit would also be massively boosted by saving Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy from expiry. That, however, does not seem to bother them. It's unfair, they howl, to raise anyone's taxes at such a time – failing to point out that "raising taxes" is very different from letting tax cuts expire on time (as they were designed to do, not by Obama, but by President George W Bush).

It is a staggering confidence trick that the Republicans are seeking to pull off. Except that most such con jobs at least vaguely try and disguise themselves. This one is being carried out in plain sight.

The Republicans are fond of using tough language about Obama. They call him an extremist and a socialist and a revolutionary. Well, perhaps some of that tone should be used back at them. This Republican strategy is not about politics. It is about class war: waged by the rich against the poor.

It will be a terrible indictment of America's political system and the weakness of Obama's political will if they get away with it.