Consciously or otherwise, certain people within the Liberal Party have made the same decision as Kevin Rudd did four years ago.
Winning the internal battle is more important than the next election.
It's not the policy direction killing the government, it's the utter lack of discipline. Try and recall when a day last passed without at least one disgruntled backbencher popping up to complain or challenge the executive. And that's just on the record.
Tony Abbott's ongoing destabilisation of the government, apparently for its own good, is Exhibit A, but just one manifestation of a broader schism.
The disenchantment runs deeper than a disgruntled former prime minister squaring up for being dumped 21 months ago. No one, except Abbott, sees Abbott as the solution but importantly he is the bomb thrower for the Right.
Christopher Pyne and his influence within the leadership group and Cabinet has been a growing source of frustration among the Right for some time.
His secretly recorded comments to a factional knees-up on Friday night, in which he boasted of growing moderate influence in the party and a near-term solution to same-sex marriage, were unremarkable insofar as that is what factional warriors say when they are talking among their own.
Designed to start something
But the recording and leaking to moderate hater Andrew Bolt was designed to start something.
Within 24 hours, Turnbull had turned on his own by crushing a move by Trent Zimmerman and Dean Smith to introduce a private members bill on same-sex marriage in August with the aim to have a number of Liberals cross the floor to ensure its passage.
The Right, always carping on about their freedom to cross the floor, does not believe this right should apply to the other faction and has threatened to blow up the show.
But it's not just about gay marriage. As soon as Turnbull removes that trigger, there will be another. Abbott, in his provocative speech on Tuesday, complained about the Gonski 2.0 package and then took aim at the next flashpoint, plans for a clean energy target.
Turnbull is under pressure now to replace moderates in Cabinet with conservatives.
It is increasingly apparent that the demands will not stop until Turnbull himself is pushed out.
Looking on in disbelief
No one is stopping to think of the consequences. It's not even been about saving the furniture. There is no Messiah. Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison, Abbott or Julie Bishop will not lift the polls and they certainly have no new solutions to the challenges the government faces, especially debt and deficit.
Labor, which is looking on in disbelief at the Liberals adopting their template for self-destruction, knows now that dumping Rudd seven years ago was an error. It split the party, cost it power and destroyed its brightest prospect, Julia Gillard.
Parachuting in Dutton, Morrison or any other future prospect would kill them too.
The best thing that happened to Labor was to lose the 2013 election, which led to the retirement of Rudd and Gillard, enabling a purge and a successful rebuild.
The Liberals would be better off sticking with Turnbull and taking their chances at the next election. If they win, they win. If they lose, they win in that they purge themselves of a now intractable problem.
