If you go the href route, you can save it
To disable:
$('a').each(function(){
$(this).data("href", $(this).attr("href")).removeAttr("href");
});
Then re-enable using:
$('a').each(function(){
$(this).attr("href", $(this).data("href"));
});
In one case I had to do it this way because the click events were already bound somewhere else and I had no control over it.