Scott Adams has noted how Trump's views evolve to the people's, I do agree in thinking he's a populist. Would any of the other GOP candidates have had a gay man speak at the RNC?
Populists can be dangerous, but they can also do a lot of good. It seems worth a chance in the current environment, though ever since I read this passage from http://www.constitution.org/eng/patriarcha.htm I've been wary of those with mass support: "Nero, Heliogabalus, Otho, Vitellius, and such other monsters of nature, were the minions of the multitude and set up by them. Pertinax, Alexander, Severus, Gordianus, Gallus, Emilianus, Quintilius, Aurelianus, Tacitus, Probus, and Numerianus, all of them good emperors in the judgment of all historians, yet murdered by the multitude."