The current Republican Party does not want to fight unemployment. If they did, they'd have a real economic policy. There are a few ways to do it – targeted infrastructure spending, for instance, or an employer of last resort program. Even tax cuts can be beneficial when targeted properly.
What have they proposed?
Tax cuts paid for by increasing the national debt, slashing social security and medicare. Tax cuts targeted primarily at the wealthy and at corporations - they'd rather let the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone than see taxes on people making 200k a year go up. They say it's to "create jobs" but similar policies have been empirically proven to do nothing except make the rich richer; we've been cutting taxes on the wealthy for 30 years and unemployment's higher than it's been since the great depression.
What else? A repeal of "Obamacare". A principled defense of the right of large corporations to buy elections via campaign contributions, through opposition to the DISCLOSE act and support of Citizens United. Undemocratic tactics, like exhorting people to "Vote from the rooftops" and the usage of senate procedure to block legislation despite having 41% of the voters. Support for outsourcing, hatred of unions, and even among much of the party opposition to the concept of the minimum wage (and keep in mind which party raised it in '06) all of which amounts to a policy of institutional support for cheap labor and opposition to a decent wage.
There are many countries, and have been many more throughout history, with a vast gulf between the rich and the poor, where the tax burden fell on the poor. Ancien regime France, for instance, saw vast taxes on the peasantry and nobles exempt from taxation.
Many countries around the world still have people unable to see a doctor and dying of preventable diseases, regressive tax structures, cheap labor, governments in fealty to big business, weak or non-existent social safety nets, and political parties which do not respect the results of elections.
We typically call them "third world countries" and we should not be so arrogant as to assume America can remain "first world" forever.