“I’m not playing games,” he said Tuesday. “I really haven’t decided.”

The Muskogee Republican attracted large crowds to town hall meetings in Sapulpa on Monday night and Tulsa Tuesday morning, and he heard a good deal of praise for his anti-Washington message. Coburn, though, said politics will not enter into his decision.

“It’s a spiritual thing,” he said.

Coburn, in fact, traded Bible lessons with a constituent in Sapulpa worried about President Barack Obama’s religion. When someone asked why political parties are necessary, Coburn said it is because too many people depend on something other than faith for identity.

But politics are clearly a part of the job of U.S. senator, and Coburn’s politics continue to appeal to Oklahomans.

Nearly 140 people crowded into a room intended to seat 70 at Sapulpa City Hall. At Tulsa Technology Center’s Peoria campus, extra chairs were set out in a large auditorium to a crowd that appeared to top 200.

“People are scared,” he said.

The Sapulpa crowd applauded Coburn loudly on several occasions and turned on one man who ripped into Coburn for hugging Obama on national television and not actively seeking the ouster of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Tulsa crowd, though larger, appeared less emotional. Its questions dealt mostly with health care, jobs and federal spending.

“It’s not necessarily the taxes, but the out-of-control spending we object to,” one said.

Coburn said the place to begin cutting federal spending is in Congress, and suggested what amounts to merit pay for representatives and senators. He deflected a question about the Obama administration’s proposed changes to the defense budget by attacking the way defense dollars are spent.

“The contracting system is broken,” he said. “Between 2001 and 2006, we paid $8 billion in performance bonuses to contractors who didn’t meet the performance requirements for the bonuses.”

Coburn also tried to divert the most serious criticism of Obama, with whom he is personally friendly despite their political differences.

“You have more problems with the U.S. Congress than any president,” Coburn said when someone pressed the issue of Obama’s birthplace. “At least this guy (Obama), we know where he is. He’s out in the open. He’s hard left.”

At both meetings, Coburn said Obama’s plans for health care would lead to “government-run” medicine, which he predicted would be a financial and operational failure.

Not everyone was happy with what Coburn had to say. He told three women in Sapulpa that he would continue to hold up a bill that includes funding for treating post-partum depression, saying he opposes directed medical research of any kind.

In Tulsa, he said he could not support a loan forgiveness program for specialty doctors.

“I don’t care if I’m re-elected or not,” he said in closing the Tulsa meeting. “Being a doctor is more fun.”