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Huntsman is currently the U.S. ambassador to China. It’s an ambassadorship many think was used as a pawn in a game of political chess: with Huntsman out of the picture, and literally out of the country, he couldn’t gain momentum for a 2012 run against President Obama.

That theory isn’t too conspiratorial. Obama campaign manger David Plouffe once said that Huntsman makes him feel a “wee bit queasy” because he’s “speaking a lot of truth about the direction of the party.”

Enter a new Newsweek profile and a “wee bit queasy” could develop into a full on sickness:

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Now, it appears, the ambassador is ready to make some noise of his own. Sitting in the echo-y living room of his new Washington home, Huntsman, a tall, lean man with silver hair and impeccable posture, pauses only briefly when faced with the question of presidential aspirations. “You know, I’m really focused on what we’re doing in our current position,” he says. “But we won’t do this forever, and I think we may have one final run left in our bones.”

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His extensive foreign policy experience, something many 2012 GOP contenders lack, could make him a viable candidate.

“Huntsman, 48, cuts an impressive figure and has a fascinating personal and political story to tell, including the sort of foreign policy background most governors lack,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote in 2008, before a Chinese ambassadorship would bolster that experience even more. “The scion of a prominent Mormon family, he served as U.S. ambassador to Singapore for Bush 41 when he was in his early 30s, did trade stints in the Commerce Department and was a deputy U.S. trade representative under the current Bush, overseeing trade with Africa and Asia.”

Another Politico reporter, Mike Allen, now thinks Huntsman’s run is a given. “Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., age 50, LEANS STRONGLY toward running in 2012,” he reportedly wrote in Saturday’s “Playbook.“ ”Heads will explode at 1600 and in RomneyWorld

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When it comes to immigration policy, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s positions rank among the most moderate in the field of Republican presidential candidates.

Among his most controversial ideas is a Driving Privileges Card that allowed undocumented immigrants to drive without licenses in Utah.

Like GOP rival Rick Perry, the Texas governor, Huntsman has been a supporter of allowing the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition rates. Utah already had a version of the DREAM Act when Huntsman became governor, and he threatened to veto efforts in the state legislature to get it repealed.

“I don’t want to see a bifurcated society,” he said during a 2011 town hall meeting in Iowa. “I don’t want to people who have no say in their journey in life to find themselves trapped because they have no education.”

He does support securing the U.S.-Mexico border, however, and stopping the flow of illegal migrants into the United States. He says mass deportation of 11 million people is impossible. “There’s got to be an alternative to sending them back,” he said during a campaign stop in Iowa. “That’s unrealistic.”

“We can secure the border through means of fences, through technology, through the deployment of our National Guard troops,” he said during a stop in Iowa. “We can get it done.” During a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Huntsman admitted that he does not like the idea of building fences on borders.

“I hate the thought of a fence on the border,” he said. “I mean, for me, as an American, the thought of a fence to some extent repulses me because it is not consistent with the image that we projected from the very beginning to the rest of the world.

“But the situation is such today that I don’t think we have a choice, and before we begin the conversation of processing 11 or 12 million undocumented workers, we’ve got to secure the border.”

He said his most important assignment on immigration as president would be to restore the American people’s confidence in the federal government. That would put an end to the immigration lawmaking by the states. Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and others have passed their own laws trying to deal with the illegal immigration problem.

“The thing we need to do most on illegal immigration, because there has been zero leadership in Washington, we've created this patchwork of solutions in the states, which makes for a very complex and confusing environment,” he said. “When elected president,

I'm simply going to prove to the American people that we can secure the border. That's what they want done, and I'm not going to talk about anything else until we get it done.”

Huntsman says that until the borders are secured, discussions about comprehensive reform “has zero in the way of any intellectual credibility.”

Huntsman supports freeing up more visas for highly skilled and highly educated immigrants. He would overhaul the H1B visa process.

“We need to bring in brain power to this country to shore up our economic might,” he says. As governor, Huntsman supported a guest worker plan to bring more immigrant labor into the state. The Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative-leaning think tank, has criticized Huntsman’s performance as governor.

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