Stalking horse

[2] Hunters noticed that many birds would flee immediately on the approach of humans, but would tolerate the close presence of animals such as horses and cattle.

Hunters would therefore slowly approach their quarry by walking alongside their horses, keeping their upper bodies out of sight until the flock was within firing range.

[4] Early examples of its use in a political context occurred in the London newspaper The Observer in 1796,[5] the Connecticut Courant in the US in 1808[6] and in the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia in 1822.

The stalking horse is an exercise in assessing accurately the degree of risk, so that a full-blooded challenge is only mounted by the main party when there is a real likelihood of success.

The understanding is that the anonymous party is a major player, perhaps only a little weaker than the target itself, and the stalking horse is a minor figure who has little or no reputation to lose.

In this case, the "horse" will probably not be a young person hoping for advancement, but an older figure at the end of their career, who volunteers as a gesture of gratitude for all the benefits they believe the cause has given them, or as a chance to go out in a blaze of glory.

For example, in Britain, the elderly and largely unknown back-bench politician Anthony Meyer[10][11] challenged and helped to bring about the eventual resignation of Margaret Thatcher in the Conservative Party leadership.

In American politics, George W. Romney believed that Nelson Rockefeller had used him as a stalking horse in the 1968 Republican Party presidential primaries by promising support, then not providing it and hinting at his own entry into the campaign.

[12] Alan Keyes' entry into the 1996 Republican Party presidential primaries after Pat Buchanan had secured victories in New Hampshire and Louisiana led many to believe that Keyes was a stalking horse for neoconservative elements in the Republican Party, since Buchanan had been a well-known ardent foe of abortion and had suffered political fallout for bringing abortion and "cultural war" to the center of the public policy debate.