Younger people may think Lucca Brazzi is a rapper. Those of us slightly older who have seen the Godfather umpteen times will know that he was Don Corelone's enforcer--a man who did the Don's dirty work and allowed him to maintain the fiction that he was no involved with any nefarious activities.

It seems that every candidate has a squadron of Lucca Brazzis do engage in the knife work of the political campaign.

A case in point--Mitt Romney's religion. Romney is of course good-looking, well-spoken, unbelievably smart, well-funded and on message. So about all a rival can do is stir up the worst kinds of prejudices assumed to exist within the Republican bosom.

Psst. Romney's a Mormon.

The Globe recounts a series of incidents by campaign Lucca Brazzis hoping to incite and inflame hatred against Mormons.

County chairman for Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, Chad Workman:

One participant summed up Workman's argument this way: "The fundamental flaw of Mitt Romney . . . was that he was Mormon, not because he thinks this way or that way on one issue."

Chuck Larson, a former Iowa GOP chairman and now one of McCain's top Iowa advisers

One Republican Larson approached, who would talk only on condition of anonymity, said that Larson told him, "He's a Mormon for crying out loud -- that's essentially a cult."

Hey, when you are down in the polls the way McCain is, you do what you have to. Unfortunately, McCain's powerbase is in Arizona, where Mormons are numerous, organized and politicially influential. Mormons are actually pretty sensitive to these kinds of bigoted remarks and it will almost certainly come back to haunt McCain should he wish to retain his Senate seat a little longer.

Emma Nemecek, an Iowa field operative for Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas:

...recently forwarded an e-mail to Iowa Republicans containing a number of criticisms of Mormonism, including a charge that it is not a Christian faith. The e-mail closed with a quote from a Founding Father, John Jay: "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

I always find that particular knock on the Mormons fairly strange since the official name of the church is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". Sounds Christian to me. Of course what Ms. Nemecek is really saying is that Mormons don't accept her particular confession of faith.

Brownback, like McCain, quickly disavowed the actions of Lucca Brazzi

Katie Harbath, Giuliani's deputy e-campaign director

...forwarded to a blogger a story in The Salt Lake Tribune linking Romney to an unofficial Mormon prophecy that a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would one day save the Constitution. "Thought you'd find this interesting," Harbath wrote to the blogger

Harbath is referring to the "White Horse" prophecy. Ironically, the so-called prophecy has no standing among Mormons and has been officially condemned on at least a couple of occasions by general authorities of the church. Its provenance is highly dubious--unauthenticated transcriptions of accounts by two men who were recalling ten year old, uncorroborated events. Nevertheless, it gets trotted out every time a Mormon runs for president (which has happened four times since the prophecy was allegedly uttered in 1843). For the record, the prophecy makes no reference to a man on a white horse saving the constitution. Rather the white horse is a metaphor for the Mormon people. More than you want to know about the prophecy here.

Plenty of anonymous sh_tdisturbers have been working hard as well.

There have been numerous anonymous attacks, too, such as an unsigned, eight-page screed that arrived last month in the mailboxes of influential South Carolina Republicans charging that Mormonism was a "politically dangerous" religion founded on a hoax. Sent from Providence, the mailing alleged that church members believe in multiple gods, likened its founder, Joseph Smith, to the Islamic prophet Mohammed, and raised alarm about future directives Mormons may be required to follow.

Sounds like a North American version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...

Normally I would just chalk this up to kooks, and undoubtedly some of it can be attributed to them, but the reality that so many campaign officials in all parties have made inflammatory comments about Mormons seems to be more than a coincidence, especially as it concerns the McCain campaign which seems to have more than its fair share.