by Chris Bodenner

The latest FEC filings for SarahPAC - ostensibly to support conservative candidates - show a politician serious about building a campaign of her own. Kenneth Vogel parses the huge haul:

[P]erhaps most indicative of a more traditional, robust political operation were the $330,000 in fundraising costs reflected in the report, including $154,000 to HSP Direct, a direct-mail vendor that put together SarahPAC’s first direct-mail campaign. Palin had previously used primarily online fundraising techniques, which tend to have lower overhead but cannot necessarily equal the return rate of a well-targeted but more expensive traditional direct-mail campaign.

Reid Wilson digs deeper:

What's most notable is the number of small contributors Palin has attracted. More than 3/4 of her donations are listed as unitemized, meaning the individuals who wrote checks sent in less than $200. Much of Pres. Obama's fundraising success in '08 came from these small-dollar donors, meaning Palin has a grassroots folllowing -- one she's started to build significantly earlier than Obama did.

Jay Newton-Small connects the dots of her of burgeoning campaign and notes that it "flies in the face of the MSM group think inside the Beltway." Ben Smith begins to come around:

This is a big political story, and one that has me rethinking Palin's future a bit

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