Blaze News Capitol Hill reporter Rebeka Zeljko took a simple but necessary approach: she walked the halls of Congress and asked four Republican members a blunt question most Americans are asking — why is Congress so wildly unpopular? That kind of on-the-ground reporting is rare in a media ecosystem obsessed with narratives instead of answers, and Zeljko’s willingness to confront lawmakers deserves credit for forcing honest conversations on the record.
The numbers that motivated those questions are impossible to ignore: congressional approval has plunged into the mid-teens amid the recent funding fight and shutdown, with Gallup finding approval around 15 percent during the crucial October polling period. Americans aren’t irrational for being fed up; they’ve watched leaders trade show votes and cable TV performances while failing to govern.
What Zeljko’s video made clear — and what conservatives should emphasize — is that the lawmakers she spoke to refused to blame hard-working Americans for their disgust with Washington. Instead, they pointed to a broken system of incentives, corrosive careerism in both parties, and a mainstream media that rewards spectacle over results; that diagnosis rings true to anyone tired of business-as-usual politics.
The recent government shutdown only underscored the point: brinkmanship and internecine fights in D.C. harm real people and crush trust in institutions, as reporting from major outlets documented when services stopped and families felt the pain. If voters see Congress as an arbiters’ circus rather than a problem-solving body, they’re responding rationally to the consequences of repeated failures.
Republican members who answered Zeljko were right to refuse the easy angle of blaming voters; instead, they leaned on a conservative case for restoring accountability, cutting wasteful spending, and returning power to the people through oversight and reform. If the GOP wants to keep the trust of its base and win back swing voters, it must back those words with votes that actually reduce the size and scope of a bloat-prone federal government.
Patriots of every party should want a functioning Congress that defends liberty, secures the border, protects free speech, and lives within its means — not a permanent political theater of outrage. Zeljko’s short interviews were a reminder that Washington’s shameful approval rating isn’t the fault of the American people; it’s the consequence of leaders who forgot who they work for. The next step is accountability at the ballot box and a remobilized conservative movement that turns frustration into governance.
