Not how it works long term. You make your party very different than the winner, give an actual choice to be made. When things go to shit under the incumbents, provided your party members can give compelling reasons their ideas and policy will succeed. Or they're just sick of the incumbent and want a change. Within a year there's gonna be a complete blow out of the Liberal party in Canada and replacement by a quite different conservative party. There was a time the Liberal and PC parties leaders and policies were nearly identical, watching those debates was surreal, them angrily saying the same thing back n forth at each other in different words. The PC party no longer exists, has been replaced by an actual conservative party that does quite well, already has had a ten year prime minister despite only being a party since 1990.