Not much could be accomplished because they were mid-term elections with the opposite party as president, who could veto anything they wanted to do. Obama was the ideological choice of the left in their primary and he has accomplished many things the left wanted. Ideology matters.
Obama won the general election because most people don't understand leftist ideology. Republican primary voters themselves are surprisingly ignorant of conservative ideology, unlike Democrat primary voters who have a huge committed leftist base that drives their primaries.
It doesn't help us that ideology is so unimportant in our primaries. Leftists nominated a candidate who was committed to achieving their goals and has been hugely successful at doing so. If we don't nominate a candidate committed to our goals, our goals won't get accomplished. Trump is popular now not because there has been some decision by the voters to change whether or not they think ideology is important. It's because ideology has never been important to Republican primary voters and because they always vote on superficial, personal qualities.
You can run around screaming that ideology should be important, but it just isn't. Other than on Obamacare, there isn't one candidate energetically running on cutting or reducing the power and scope of government.
But there is one running on dramatically stopping and reversing be alien invasion, the loss of American influence, and the erosion of the American economy. Most of his solutions to those do not involve any more government power than has been exercised in the past, but WOULD proportionately expand the power of the citizen.
You can excuse congress, but they knew what was at stake and did not choose to shut down government or impeach Obama because it was unpopular. I met the other day with a GOP official with years of experience in party politics, and he said the same thing---they just didn't want to. He defended it, as you do, but said they were afraid. There is your ideology at work. No thanks.