The duck pecked back; it was the Republicans who lost clout after their budget confrontation with the president briefly closed the government in 1995.
And the N.R.A. has lost clout, they contend, as evidenced by the defeat of a referendum last year in Missouri to allow people to carry concealed weapons.
As the Reagan anti-government era began, the consumer protection job steadily lost clout until it was shuttered in the late 1990s.
The agency quickly fell victim to infighting, however, and lost clout in 2005, when its first director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was forced out.
The CSU's lost clout may be more obvious under Mr Huber, who spurned a chance to head Ms Merkel's chancellery in 2005.Yet the CSU remains formidably strong in Bavaria.
Trade unions also play a part but have lost clout in recent years, and have been damaged by a corruption scandal over BAWAG, a bank they used to own but had to sell.Corporatism may be out of fashion elsewhere, but in Austria it seems to deliver results.
The unions have already lost clout, particularly in Gdansk, where Solidarity shipworkers were noted for their militancy.
Poll: Toronto mayor's popularity unscathed by scandals, lost clout.
Still, he seemed to understand jobs in the trades had lost clout in American society.
They suspected he had lost clout in the underworld, living hand to mouth on payments from whomever he was able to scare, according to Ignatius Chinn, a San Francisco police officer and former California Department of Justice agent who spent two years investigating Chow prior to his 1995 conviction.
