SO LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT HERMAN CAIN ON MEET THE PRESS, but what I noticed is that David Gregory doesn’t seem to understand the difference between state taxes and federal taxes. Here’s what he said:

MR. CAIN: We replace capital gains tax. We replace the payroll tax. We replace corporate income tax, replace personal income tax, and replace the death tax. It is a replacement tax structure.

MR. GREGORY: But where do state taxes go? You’re saying they’re going to be repealed?

MR. CAIN: If you–with the current structure, you have state taxes, right? So with this new structure, you’re still going to have taxes–state taxes. That is muddying the water.

MR. GREGORY: How so?

MR. CAIN: Because today, under the current tax code, state taxes are there if they have it. If they don’t have a state taxes, they don’t have it. It has nothing to do with this replacement structure for the federal tax code.

MR. GREGORY: But that doesn’t make any sense to me. If I’m already paying state taxes, and I have a new Cain administration national sales tax, I’ve got more state taxes.

No, you don’t have more state taxes, you have the same state taxes — unless, that is, you don’t know the difference between a sales tax and a state tax, which would seem to be the case for Gregory. If Sarah Palin made such an error, it would be seen as proof that she was unfit for the national stage. For Gregory, well . . . draw your own conclusions.