brooklyn, halacha gives us guidelines on how we live our lives. We should be able to follow those guidelines without running a rav at every step. (Unless you are chassidish – IIRC they go to their Rebbi for most things like who to marry and other things)
The rabbonim have to pick and choose what they battle over (non-halachic issues only). For example, look at the wedding takanos – no one I know really follows them. Why? Because the exceptions are for the rich or the rabbonim…which means that its not a halachic issues, just an issue the rabbonim have championed. When the community rejects a takana or statement from rabbonim, it reduces the rabbonim to “figure heads” rather than spiritual leaders. Rabbonim are nothing if no one follows them (think about this before responding and try to understand what I mean. If you can’t quite get it, I can expand on it). The last time they cancelled this was a debacle – lets hope they don’t do something like taht again.