The conventional wisdom is that Republicans are primed to blow the best opportunity they've had in decades to oust Harry Reid by nominating Sharron Angle, a Christian conservative with backing from the Club for Growth. She leads by 8.3 points in the RCP Average. But the truth of the matter is that that Harry Reid is in deep, deep trouble, no matter who wins today's GOP primary. Here's four reasons:

None of the Republican candidates are top-tier -- The GOP debacles of 2006 and 2008 continue to reverberate in a number of Senate races in various states, but perhaps none more so than Nevada. Jon Porter, a moderately conservative Congressman from the swing Las Vegas suburbs, was viewed as the likely GOP pick to take on Reid this fall. But he lost in 2008. Governor Jim Gibbons' approval ratings disqualified him from challenging Reid (they sank to 10% in 2008), while Lieutenant Governor Brian Krolicki, who also looked at the race, was indicted in 2009 (the counts were later dismissed by a judge). Sophomore Representative Dean Heller declined to run.

That left Republicans with a number of candidates whose profiles were equally mediocre. Sue Lowden hasn't run a race since 1996. Danny Tarkanian ran a couple of races in the ‘00s, but lost them both. Angle won a couple of Assembly races before losing the primary for the open Second District in 2006 by a few hundred votes.

From the perspective of a horse race analyst, these backgrounds are pretty much indistinguishable. They're better than, say, professional poker player Brian Nadell's, but they don't carry the cache of a governor or recently elected official. In other words, a choice to nominate Angle, (or Tarkanian, or Lowden for that matter) would not be a choice to forsake a safe choice with proven statewide appeal, as it was in Kentucky.

All of these candidates have significant warts -- Much has been made of Angle's . . . unique . . . positions on certain issues. Jim Geraghty of National Review, in a piece that is critical of Angle, has a pretty decent collection of these views here.

But there's a reason Angle is bounding into the lead. Lowden famously suggested on national television that people try bartering with their doctors for cheaper health care. Later, given an opportunity to retract her statement, she doubled down, and then tripled down, suggesting that doctors supported what Democrats came to call her "chickens for checkups" solution. This is not a sign of surefire political instincts.

As for Tarkanian, he has managed to stay out of the spotlight and avoid gaffes. But he is an unproven candidate, and it isn't clear that he'll be able to avoid gaffes once the spotlight shines on him.

Angle polls the weakest against Reid; Lowden is the strongest -- This is one of the biggest misconceptions out there. The most recent poll - the Mason Dixon poll taken from June 1-June 3 - shows Angle leading Reid by a 44-41% margin, as opposed to Lowden, who trails the Majority lead by a point. Tarkanian led by seven. Earlier polls show Angle performing worse, but that is likely as much a function of lower name identification (her surge has only begun in the last couple of weeks) than anything else. Tarkanian actually polls the best out of the three, but as noted above, he's been flying under the radar.

Moreover, none of this changes the fact that, in polling terms, Reid is a dead man walking no matter who he faces. In the past two months, he's polled a 37, 39, 39, 42, and 42 against Lowden. His numbers against Tarkanian are 41, 41, 43 and 39, while his numbers against Angle are 40, 42, 43, and 41. The only numbers that change are voters flipping between Lowden/Tarkanian/Angle and undecided.

Not only are these numbers virtually identical in statistical terms, they are uniformly atrocious for someone who has been a fixture in Nevada politics since Nixon's first term, and only a handful of politicians with these types of poll numbers five months out from an election have gone on to win.

How much will Republican social issues really matter this year? -- The conventional wisdom is that Angle's brand of Christian conservatism may well be too much for the libertarian-ish voters in the Silver state to bear. Truth is, Lowden and Tarkanian hold similar, if more nuanced views.

But I think there's a few important caveats. First, Harry Reid is pro-life, which deprives him of the number one card typically played against Christian conservatives in swing states. Second, the idea that the state won't elect a social conservative statewide is belied by the fact that it has twice elected John Ensign, and elected Governor Gibbons in 2006.

Most importantly, I'm not sure that voters are focused on social issues this year, and even if Angle/Reid/Tarkanian are poor fits for libertarian-leaning voters, so too is Reid. After all, Reid brings a ton of baggage to the table, as a leading face of the Washington that voters presently despise. Reid may run ads implying that Angle wants to make beer illegal, or that Tarkanian favors Arizona's illegal immigration law, or that Lowden wants to reduce health care to a barter system. But the Republican nominee will respond with ads showing that Harry Reid was responsible for a health care bill that a majority of the state's electorate disapproves of, that he pushed through a deeply unpopular stimulus bill, and that he moved TARP through the Senate.

In the end, regardless of whether the Republican nominee is Angle, Tarkanian, Lowden, or even Brian Nadell, this will be a referendum on Harry Reid and the Obama Administration. Right now, that referendum doesn't look so good for Reid against any of the potential Republicans.