the reality is that you or i, most people reading this blog, would have been republicans during the period in question, from 1870-1910. as such, you would have viewed this debate between populists and democrats as a sort of schism on the right, and you might have been sympathetic to arguments that it was just a way for the democrats to seize power in the midwest. certainly, the initial organizing heft came from essentially democratic-party aligned white farmers in the south, so the initial impetus to organize in kansas came from pretty shady sources; to kansas' credit, it was able to push back against the racism in the populist movement and instead offer a synthesis between some of the economic ideas of the populists and the racial ideas of the whigs and republicans, but it was in turn firmly rejected by the populists in the south, who clung to the democrat party, largely due to the same kinds of race baiting you still see today. rather, they seemed obsessed with the idea of rebuilding white solidarity across the north and the south, and banishing the blasted "sectionalism". the kansas populists were consequently a reform movement within a reform movement, a fringe within a fringe, and trying to understand what they were and what they stood for means placing them in the context of the wider movement around them, to grasp how unusual they were in the broader farm reform movement, which was almost entirely about white solidarity.
so, republicans like you or i may have seen something of admiration in the kansas populists, if we weren't frustrated with them for electing democrats.
but, we would have seen the broader populist movement as a freak show on the right, not unlike polite society saw the tea party. the commonalities far overpower the differences.
and, that's just the point i want to make - this idea that the populists of times past were pure of heart and free of prejudice is totally wrong.