Uncertainty isn’t a ticket to the White House. Yet voters today can’t really know whether they’re pulling the lever for Mitt Romney the pragmatist or Mitt Romney the newly minted ideologue.

Dual victories in Alabama and Mississippi this week don’t change the fact Rick Santorum remains an underdog in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. But his candidacy is already historically significant. As Ralph Reed, a longtime GOP strategist and the chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, pointed out to National Journal, Santorum has already won more contests—10—than any challenger to the GOP establishment since conservative icon Ronald Reagan in 1976. “It is an impressive feat,” Reed said. Reagan piled up victories in 11 primaries in 1976 and deprived President Ford of enough delegates to win the nomination outright. Ford prevailed at the convention but lost the general election. Four years later, Reagan won the nomination and the presidency.

Bloodied but still advancing, Mitt Romney methodically progressed toward the GOP nomination after a grueling Super Tuesday that underscored the continuing class, religious and ideological divisions in a closely divided Republican electorate.

Mitt Romney hasn't won a state in the deep South and isn't likely to anytime soon. He hasn't even won a border state, and his campaign isn't predicting victory tonight in Tennessee. That doesn't mean, however, that Romney couldn't surprise former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and prevail in the Volunteer State.

Super Tuesday will highlight the region of the country often called the heart of the Republican Party: the South.

Turning points have come and gone in this year’s remarkably turbulent Republican presidential race. But Mitt Romney’s narrow victory in Tuesday’s Michigan primary may represent a Battle of the Bulge moment in which he has tipped the balance of the fight by demonstrating the ability to amass a slightly broader coalition than his principal rival, Rick Santorum.