'Deny, deny, deny': CNN panel nails down the 'Trump-Bannon playbook' that won over GOP voters for Roy Moore

The stunning success of Alabama's Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore in the face of allegations of sexual misconduct by several women appears to have been inspired by President Donald Trump.

As CNN's Amanda Carpenter and Anderson Cooper noted in a panel discussing live election returns in the special Alabama Senate election, Moore appears to be taking a page from the "Trump playbook" that spun refusal to resign amid allegations of sexual harassment into success among conspiracy-hungry right-wingers.

"Deny, deny, deny," chief political analyst Gloria Borger said. "It's sort of the 'Access Hollywood' playbook, which, in fact, the president has since denied that the tape is real."

That playbook, she said, "worked for Moore."

Furthermore, Borger said, Trump and former advisor and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon are "virtually indistinguishable."

"President Trump is playing out of the Bannon playbook," she concluded, "and if Roy Moore wins, I think Steve Bannon is going to have a lot to say about Nevada and Arizona. And I think the president is going to listen to him much more than he would ever listen to [Senate Majority Leader and Kentucky Republican] Mitch McConnell."

Watch Borger lay out the multi-layered rulebooks at play in Alabama below, via CNN.