With Donald Trump’s approval rating among Republicans remaining relatively consistent, oscillating between the high 80s and low 90s, conservative critics of the president make up just a tiny fraction of the electorate. So-called “Never Trump” commentators have pitifully little pull within the Republican Party, but you wouldn’t know it based on mainstream news coverage, where pundits like Rick Wilson, Jennifer Rubin, Steve Schmidt, and David Frum have continued to thrive.

If there’s one thing Trump’s improbable victory in 2016 should have made clear, it’s that these are not particularly relevant voices in the modern political era, and yet media outlets haven’t recognized this fact and acted accordingly. If anything, it seems as though conservative Trump critics are being promoted more aggressively than ever.

The continued elevation of “Never Trumpers” hasn’t seemed to have had much of an effect on Republicans, leaving them to armchair quarterback their way through the Democratic primary.

“Anyone but Trump? Not so fast,” reads the headline of Bret Stephens’ January 24 New York Times column, which warns of the “radicalism” of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. “Bernie Sanders is a risk we can’t run at this moment of national peril,” says columnist Max Boot in The Washington Post. “Crazy Won’t Beat Trump,” reads the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Peggy Noonan. “Bernie Can’t Win,” goes Frum’s three-word headline in The Atlantic.

Wilson, a strategist and author, has managed to parlay his disgust with Trump into two books, Everything Trump Touches Dies and Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump -- and Democrats from Themselves.

David Brooks has effectively turned his New York Times column into a vision board for qualities he’s looking for in a Democratic candidate -- which essentially boils down to his desire for Democrats to move to the right.

And after years of smearing President Barack Obama for everything from Benghazi to terrorism to taxes, Rubin uses her column as a constant warning against moving too far to the left, with headlines like “The Sanders surge is real. Democrats should be wary,” “A warning to Democrats: Don’t let Bernie Sanders get away from you,” and “Democrats cannot win in 2020 merely by turning out the base.”

On MSNBC, Schmidt regularly argues against progressive policies under the guise of a concern for “electability.”