How the hell did we get here?

Ok, I was watching The Five on fox yesterday. The lone liberal on the show is Bob Beckel. Nice enough guy. Makes me laugh and generally has a good sense of humor, given that he is surrounded by four conservatives/libertarians. But he let the mask slip yesterday and I thought I would point it out. He said that his problem with the Tea Party is that they are not career politicians. (ed. Note, I am paraphrasing here because the writer is too lazy to find the actual quote). The broader point is that this is exactly the issue that Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher etc. have with the Tea Partiers as well. They, the Tea Partiers, are not, in Beckel's opinion, educated career politicians and therefore they are not qualified to, ahem, lead the uneducated masses. The liberal media’s abject distain for the Partiers is not policy based at all, it's more fundamental than that. The politicians have had no one in Washington to call Bull-Sh&# for so long, that they are truly affronted when a bunch of rubes (who don’t even have a poly-sci degree for Christ’s sake) come to their ivory tower and say, “Um, excuse me madams and sirs, but what the hell are you people doing?” While Beckel did qualify his condescension again and again by excluding present company, I, Oddly enough, I took offense to him. But then I started to think about the wonderful things that we (the plebes) have gotten in return from all those politically educated people. Let’s see we are over 14 trillion dollars in debt and have virtually nothing to show for it (unless of course we count well funded union pensions and a brand new automobile company that makes cars that nobody wants). So, sitting in my underwear trying to decide which flavor of Pop-Tart I was going to have for dinner, I pondered, What if I ran my household like those Ivy School geniuses. Oh, wait, when I was married, my wife did run the household like that. Every month I would get a credit card bill that totaled more than I made. And what did I have to show for it? Upgrades on the house? New tires for the car? Or even an ‘investment’ in education? No, none of these pedestrian things, only new shiny purses and shoes (of the high-heeled variety so no help there either). When I brought this imbalance to my now ex-wife's attention she said, "Oh don't worry, we still have $5,000 on our credit limit." I guess suggesting to me we won't have to call the credit card company to raise our limit for another month or so. (and she doesn’t even have a poly-sci degree!) So now these geniuses in Washington have run up an enormous level of debt and we have virtually nothing to show for it (education - near the bottom of the list of industrial nations. Crumbling infrastructure. And of course Cowboy Poetry!). So, these insaneTea Partiers come to Washington and simply point out these failings to the educated elite and in response the Tea Partiers get - a calm reasoned debate? No, instead they get a full-throated tempy-tantrum because somebody wants to take away the elites’ check-book. Unbelievable..