Rich Lowry has an amusing article on NRO this morning recounting his experiences yesterday walking among the anti-Bush protesters. Conventional wisdom among the major media has been that these protests could tarnish the convention. Indeed, some of the media can hardly contain their hope that New York 2004 becomes a redux of Chicago 1968.

But there is another, more probable effect. The attempt to keep the Democratic National Convention scripted and "positive" was in no small measure an attempt to keep in check the radical Michael Moore/Howard Dean elements of the party which would, quite frankly, scare straight a fair number of swing voters. With the protests, however, the lunatics are running the asylum. The major media will do their best to cover the numbers of protesters without covering the outrageous, offensive, and uninformed content, but the new media will, and voters in swing states will not be impressed.