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With former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. announcing he is stepping down from his post as U.S. ambassador to China and hinting that he may run for president in 2012, get ready for Round 3 of the Utah Mormon Republican heavyweight rumble.

If Huntsman does indeed vie for the GOP presidential nomination next year, there is a good chance it could come down to him and Utah darling Mitt Romney, who in many circles is considered the current front-runner among Republicans.

These two have gone at it before in one way or another, and if past exchanges are a clue, they really don't seem to like each other much.

When Salt Lake City's 2002 Winter Olympics bid committee was hit with an international bribery scandal while the city's Winter Games preparations were still under way, committee head Tom Welch and his chief deputy Dave Johnson were dumped, so local community and government leaders needed a new honcho.

Romney, sired by Mormon royalty whose father George, the former Michigan governor, had been a presidential candidate, was chosen to right the ship. The Olympics were a great success and Romney used that experience to launch a successful bid for governor of Massachusetts and later a run for president in 2008.

But when Romney was selected, the Huntsman family publicly declared that he was part of a corrupt bargain.

Jon Huntsman Sr., the billionaire Utah philanthropist and father of the would-be presidential hopeful, publicly decried the pick at the time and said his son had been manipulated and deceived by the Utah king-makers, including then-Gov. Mike Leavitt.

Huntsman said the selection of Romney made it clear there was a deal between him and Leavitt from the beginning, but Jon Huntsman Jr., who already had impressive credentials as a former U.S. ambassador, had been asked to apply for the job just to give the appearance that there was an honest search.

Leavitt and the other leaders denied there was a secret deal with Romney, but the ice storm between the Huntsman and Romney camps was evident.

Later, when Romney was contemplating his 2008 presidential bid, Huntsman Jr. was a foreign affairs adviser to Romney. But when the Republican front-runners were set and the campaign began heating up, Huntsman, who had become the governor of Utah, was an early endorser of Romney foe John McCain, the senator from Arizona who eventually won the nomination.

Sources close to both camps told me at the time that Huntsman got an unfriendly call from his fellow Mormon Romney after he announced his endorsement of McCain, and was called an unprintable name.

So here they are again. Romney already is considered one of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in 2012 and Huntsman has emerged as a "what if."

Both, too, might have to address accusations of flip-flopping.

Romney will undoubtedly face criticism for his liberal-leaning statements on social issues like abortion and gay rights when he ran for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat against Ted Kennedy, followed by his conservative-leaning statements on those issues when he was in Utah, then liberal-leaning comments again when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, only to be followed by a sharp turn to the right after he was elected and quickly set his sights on the national prize.

Huntsman, on the other hand, made Utah conservatives mad when he told GOP delegates he supported vouchers when vying for the nomination, but did not use his bully pulpit as governor to save the voucher law from being repealed at the ballot box. He also enraged Utah conservatives with his initiatives to tackle global warming and his support for equal rights for gay and lesbian couples.

Utah Republican leaders have said he could never get the nomination in their convention again.

I doubt he loses much sleep over that.

Contact Paul Rolly at prolly@sltrib.com