I tend to believe little to nothing of what was written about Socrates, especially when it comes to Plato. Reading the Republic, I always got the sense that Plato was simply using Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. Plato did not despise democracy because of Socrates, he despised it because he, like so many other historical detractors of ochlocracy (mob rule, ancient Greek slur against Democracy), believed that most people were too stupid to be trusted with civil power.
What Plato proposes for government looks like an "enlightened" variation of Sparta.
That’s one of the problems concerning the Socratic dialogues; there’s very little surviving material that can be directly traced to Socrates, and there’s a question of whether or not Socrates actually said everything he was claimed to have said.
And yes, the philosophers such as Plato certainly did espouse a bit of elitism, didn’t they?