Can the replicated database be the publisher with SQL Server I need to setup replication for a Client but their production database server doesn't seem to have the components installed to enable publishing.

Is it possible to setup what should be the subscriber as the publisher and pull changes from the master database? And is this going to cause problems?
No. 

The publisher is local to the data being published and can't be remote. 



You can have a separate distributor of course

You'll have to consider database mirroring perhaps as an alternative or enable replication at the client