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It'll be no consolation to Malcolm Turnbull, but bitter leadership divisions seem to be deep in the DNA of Australian politics.
It should, however, be a big worry for the Liberals that most major splits have led to the party in turmoil being condemned to many long years in the wilderness.
All splits have been some combination of the three potent Ps of politics - power, policy and personality.
Some of the most bitter and damaging splits came in times of crisis and destroyed governments.
The first, during the dark and bloody days of World War I, was over conscription.
The two conscription referendums, in 1916 and 1917, split Labor and re-opened sectarian hatreds.
The pro-conscription Labor prime minister Billy Hughes - despised Labor rat or revered Little Digger - was expelled. He and his minority of supporters joined forces with the opposition Liberals, forming government as the Nationalists.
What was left of Labor took more than a decade to recover and it was 1929 before it was back in power.
Just in time for prime minister James Scullin to be engulfed by the Great Depression.
His position, with a hostile Senate, swelling dole queues and enormous pressure to cut spending, was diabolical. His fracturing party made it impossible.
First Joe Lyons, a cabinet minister, defected and became leader of the opposition, renamed the United Australia Party (UAP). Then, when the Lang Laborites, followers of Jack Lang, the NSW premier who wanted to renege on state debt and was later dismissed from office, turned on him, Scullin lost control of parliament. Lyons became the UAP prime minister in January 1932. Labor was out until 1941.
The next great crisis came and this time it was the conservatives' turn.
Robert Menzies succeeded Lyons, who died in office in April 1939, just three months before World War II started.
If the first two great splits were fundamentally about policy, Menzies' fall was largely about personality. He was widely disliked, especially by the Country Party, for his aloofness and arrogance.
And, after the 1940 election, he needed the help of two independents to retain government.
While he was in England in 1941, fighting Churchill for more say in war planning, his enemies plotted. After his return, realising he'd lost support, he resigned the leadership before the inevitable assassination, saying: I have been done ... I'll lie down and bleed awhile.
Soon afterwards John Curtin became prime minister, inaugurating more than eight years of Labor power. After he stopped bleeding, Menzies formed the modern Liberal Party.
There've been no government blood-lettings on quite that scale since, though there have been two prime ministers overthrown by their party rooms.
Billy McMahon challenged John Gorton, whose erratic ways made him ever more enemies, in March 1971. After the vote was tied,
which meant that Gorton technically had survived, he declared he'd lost the support of the party and resigned anyway. Labor came back at the next election.
In December 1991, Paul Keating, at his second challenge, ended the era of Bob Hawke. Keating prevailed mainly because a majority had, if in many cases reluctantly, decided that Keating was the better electoral prospect - even though Hawke had won four elections, making him Labor's most successful leader. Keating won 18 months later.
For bust-ups in opposition, nothing touches the Labor split of the 1950s and 60s.
That really was a long battle involving communism and Catholicism for the soul of the Labor movement, party and unions.
It left raw scars for more than a generation and helped keep Menzies and his Liberal successors in power for 23 years.
Beside it, the Liberals' most serious internal conflict in opposition until now - the running contest between John Howard and Andrew Peacock for much of the 1980s - was a minor affair.
But it still involved plot, coup and hatred; and helped keep Hawke in power.
The Turnbull crisis certainly involves personality. More importantly, it goes to the Liberals' fundamental response to one of the great policy questions of our time, climate change.
Power seems less important. Turnbull, of course, wants to keep it and, in his exercise of it, has exacerbated his problems.
Oddly, though, the principals on the other side seem hesitant power-grabbers.
