It's unfathomable that the Liberals would even contemplate doing what Labor did to two prime ministers in a row. Changing jockeys in the back straight will only ensure the horse loses the race, writes Terry Barnes.

Former US president Ronald Reagan was a great political success because he loved people and understood human nature. One of his favourite political sayings came from a song popular in his youth: "Dance with the one that brung ya."

Reagan's point was simple: in politics, as in life, you support those who support you. You are loyal to those who have made you. And that's not just in good times, or when it suits you.

In the federal Liberal party room, there are 39 MPs elected for the first time in 2010 or 2013 (or returned to Parliament after defeat in 2007), and eight senators elected and appointed at or since the 2010 election. All 47 were brung to the parliamentary dance by one man: Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

It was Abbott who re-energised a moribund opposition when Labor's Kevin Rudd seemed set to dominate the political landscape for a generation. It was Abbott who gave the Coalition a rallying point around climate change realism. It was Abbott who brought down Rudd and Julia Gillard, and became the most effective opposition leader we've ever seen. And it was Abbott who led the Coalition to victory two years ago this month with a sweeping Lower House majority.

With leadership speculation once again sweeping the foetid corridors of Parliament House, sending the parliamentary press gallery into raptures, there is one basic point that nervous Liberal MPs should remember: they would never have got there without Tony Abbott.

Of course, many newer MPs think they got there by dint of their own hard work and political genius. But truly they were elected because Abbott in opposition read the public mood better than Rudd, Gillard and former leader Malcolm Turnbull. He single-handedly overturned the conventional wisdom of Australian politics, that governments are safe for at least two terms. He bypassed progressive elites who largely set policy and political agendas, giving voice to the great silent majority of Australians who unfashionably wanted to stop the boats, were open to action on climate change but rejected zealotry, and wanted the fiscal mess of the Rudd-Gillard years to be cleaned up.

Every black mark possible is being brought up against the Prime Minister. Even immigration minister Peter Dutton last week making unguarded light of climate change, along with the comment about some parts of the world having an easier-going attitude to life than ours, was enthusiastically served up by Abbott's legion of critics as a crime against humanity. That none of us are entitled to pronounce judgment on Dutton, since we're all guilty of dropping similar thoughtless clangers at least once in our lives, was an inconvenient truth best ignored.

It's undeniable that there's great unrest in Liberal parliamentary and wider party circles about the Government's performance. The 2014 budget had sound fiscal goals but was a political step off a cliff. The Coalition has been trailing in every single poll since April last year and in the last two months, since Bronwyn Bishop's entitlements helicopter crashed and burned, the Coalition has lurched from one misstep to another.

And if there is the possibility of a reshuffle, the trigger to the latest leadership feeding frenzy, what of it? Renewing, regrouping and focusing a ministry should be part of normal political practice. Good performers need to be promoted, poorer ones need to be moved sideways or demoted. In the UK, it's so normal that the parade of winners and losers to 10 Downing Street is as predictable as summer rain. But in Australia, even hints of reshuffles are destabilising and a mark of panic.

Those chattering loudest now, feeding the media beast with speculation and undermining the Liberal campaign to retain Canning in Saturday's by-election, conveniently forget that Abbott's ship was turning around since last February's "near-death" spill motion. The 2015 budget was well-received and the Coalition again competitive in the polls. And even with its latest troubles, there's still a year until the next election must be held, and every chance of a Coalition win whoever is PM.

Labor's cynical decision that its best revenge on Abbott is to make Parliament unworkable, turning the Senate into a quagmire dragging down good government into its quicksand, is getting lost in the rush to bring down the Prime Minister. Opposition leader Bill "Corbyn" Shorten has for the last two years been leading a populist protest movement, not a serious party of government. Shorten's union dependency alarms many middle-class voters, no matter how much they're nervous about Abbott. And many voters are disturbed at Shorten's unedifying evidence to the Trade Union Royal Commission, let alone his role in knifing two prime ministers in 2010 and 2013.

Unless any of the undeclared challengers to Abbott actually show something more to offer than not being him - and none have since leadership rumblings started back in January - there is no point in any of this chatter. This electoral race has a year to run, and changing jockeys in the back straight won't achieve anything other than ensuring the horse loses the race. For MPs it's a matter of holding their nerve: all the bad polls don't matter if the Coalition pips Labor in the only poll that counts.

Whatever anyone thinks of Tony Abbott, or his chances to take the party to another victory, it's unfathomable that the Liberals would even contemplate doing what Labor did to two prime ministers in a row.

Abbott has made some bad political and policy mistakes, no question, but he's a decent man capable of learning from them. If he wants re-election, he damn well better get on with it. But the Coalition's situation is very much retrievable, and Liberal party room nervous nellies need to understand that there's no guarantee a leadership change will change anything.

The Liberal classes of 2010 and 2013, and all their colleagues who have benefited from Abbott's loyalty to them, should remember Ronald Reagan and dance with the one that brung ya.

Terry Barnes is a policy consultant who advised Tony Abbott in the Howard government. Twitter: @TerryBarnes5.