“I find it sad that the president gets personal with these groups who are just expressing themselves in a respectful manner,” Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown said Friday morning in Washington to a conference of Republican lawyers. “That’s the way our country operates.”…

When asked about his general views on Tea Partiers, Brown — whose election in January has been hailed a sign of the power of the conservative grassroots activists — rejected the premise that the protesters concerned with runaway government spending should be solely credited with putting a Republican in the Massachusetts Senate seat for the first time in decades.

“Did the Tea Party movement help me? Sure they did. So did 1.1 million other people in my state and so did others across the country,” Brown said.