PBA, DY- don’t we generally pick a rebbi/posek/mashpia who is on our wavelength? Perhaps they may agree- who’s to say what’s the chicken and what’s the egg in this case? It really seems like you’re being choshed bekesheirim in stam assuming that it’s just because they agree with the idea in theory that they are doing what their rebbeim are so vehement about.
Can’t it work the other way? How do we know that Rabbi Chareidi from Lakewood or Bnei Brak is sending his kids to single-gender schools because that is the psak of his rebbi? Maybe it’s the way he grew up that convinced him it’s a good idea. Maybe he’s been to so many frum schools his whole life that he doesn’t see why he WOULD go coed. Hey, maybe he read some article in the NYT about how great single-gender education is for girls. (R”L- now I’m the one being choshed… 🙂 )
I don’t think that anyone is denying that some questions are pretty universally “straw man” (though, from experience, I’d say that many chassidim do in fact ask those sheilos). The question is (and this is what you aren’t really clarifying) is which of those questions fall between obviously-halachic and straw man. One man’s straw man can be another’s “I can’t proceed without hadracha” issue.
It seems to me like a premise of your OP is that if MO people did ask daas Torah they’d be getting different answers and doing different things. I could easily be misreading but that was my impression. To use it as MY straw man, then, I personally have seen this to be untrue. From the rav’s perspective, I know a prominent rebbi and mashpia in the YU community and I’ve seen how he is inundated with hashkafic sheilos and how people will not embark on something (or quit it mid-go) upon his negative psak. And they’re STILL being told to sign a prenup…