Will small donors propel Sarah Palin to GOP nomination in 2012?

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In an opinion piece at The Daily Caller, Jon Ward says that SarahPAC's large number of small contributions suggests a road less traveled to the Republican Party's nomination for president two years from now:

Sarah Palin has demonstrated she can go around the mainstream media using Facebook and Twitter. But her recent fundraising shows that she can also, if she so desires, go around the established network of high dollar conservative “whale” donors who have underwritten most Republican candidates for president in recent history.

In other words, she’s a wild card who can pretty much do what she wants, no matter how the GOP establishment feels about it.

The FEC report filed Sunday by SarahPAC, Palin’s political action committee, showed a remarkably high percentage of small dollar donors who gave less than $200. The bulk of the money received in the second quarter—$660,000 out of $865,000—was unitemized. That means it came from supporters whose contribution was not only less than $200, but who may have given multiple times yet still not gone over the $200 mark in total giving.

Gov. Palin’s high percentage of small donations maps out a potential path to the 2012 GOP presidential nomination despite the presence of establishment Republicans who are backing moderates such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, neither of whom excite the party's base nor Tea Party independents.

- JP