THE REBELS WITH COLD FEET

FRANK LUNTZ, THE BABY-FACED POLLSTER who helped Newt Gingrich draft the "Contract with America" last year, looked a little frazzled as he rushed around the Capitol last Thursday night. And no wonder: all week normally loyal Republicans in both the Senate and the House had balked at key Contract with America provisions ranging from term limits for lawmakers to cuts in welfare for unwed mothers. More than 100 House Republicans declared independence from a once sacred $500-per-child tax credit, claiming the give-away was too generous to upper-income taxpayers. Stories detailing Republican "disarray" were beginning to appear in newspapers, and as Luntz dashed to yet another strategy session with his G.O.P. employers, he admitted that there was talk among the G.O.P. rank and file about "caving" on tax cuts. "Republicans are spooked," Luntz said later, though he argued that it was only temporary. "It's strange for a pollster to say, but there's too much focus on the polls."

Live by the polls, die by the polls. The same surveys Luntz and Gingrich employed to stitch the contract together last summer are now compelling some Republicans to think about unraveling it. Nearly five months after the midterm election, Americans are worried more about reducing the deficit than reducing taxes, jeopardizing what Gingrich calls the "crowning jewels" in the contract. The popularity of spending cuts in general remains high, but the prospect of cutting school lunches and welfare benefits for indigent parents is distinctly less so--a harbinger of trouble when deeper and more specific cuts in middle-class programs come in April. And while support for some contract provisions, such as term limits, remains strong, many Americans are concerned that Republicans may go "too far" in rolling back government. Increasingly, so are some Republicans. "No one said we were all going to vote for the entirety of the contract," said Representative Bill Goodling of Pennsylvania. "We said we would bring all the issues to the floor."

Nowhere is the public's doubt about the contract so visible as on tax cuts. The contract includes $188 billion in new reductions, deductions and credits for corporations, small businesses and families. But in a TIME/CNN survey of 800 adults last week, 62% said reducing the federal budget deficit was "more important" than cutting taxes--a larger number than recorded in 1992. That sentiment helped explain why 102 House Republicans--including 10 of 20 committee chairmen and 35 of 73 freshmen-asked the leadership to revise the contract's proposed $500 per child tax credit and limit it to taxpayers making less than $95,000 a year. Otherwise, they argued, the credit would go to anyone making up to $200,000--hardly just the middle class. Perhaps worse, it would also amount to a backdoor raise for members of Congress, who make $133,600 a year. That could spell political demise in 1996.