As we wrote yesterday, Sarah Palin announced the early dates for her “Going Rogue” national book tour. At the same time, Sarah announced that she will be back on Twitter.

Sarah’s new Twitter account, SarahPalinUSA, has exploded with an incredible surge of followers. In the 24 hours since she announced the site 12,758 people have signed up to be a part of the excitement.

It should be noted that Sarah’s former Twitter account, the one she used as Governor, had 152,650 followers when she suspended its use.

To put that into perspective, that was more than Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and Tim Pawlenty had combined, with over 60,000 to spare. Two thirds of those folks joined up after her July 3rd speech announcing she would step down as Governor of Alaska.

With almost one million supporters on Facebook, a number that grows by the hour on her very busy site, it’s quite obvious that Sarah has mastered the internet in ways other politicians have not been able to.

Sarah has been able to by-pass the old media, and get her messages out to America, unfiltered, and unedited. With these messages she has been able to shape the national debate on health care, energy independence, and economic policy. By forgoing traditional media in favor of Facebook, Sarah has been able to make national headlines, and in the case of energy and monetary policy, headlines worldwide for her astute reflections on the state of affairs.

This is a brilliant strategy, obviously. The media follow her every move, and as her every Facebook post reaches millions, you don’t have to be signed up to read them, the old dinosaur media is obliged to report what she says, even as they try in vain to refute it; a total win-win situation for Palin.

When Sarah stepped down as governor, she promised her tweets wouldn’t be so “politically correct” as they had to be when she was in office. It will be very interesting to see what she will have to say as she tours the nation visiting with Americans on the “Going Rogue” tour.