Something I noticed in the AhS… Sometimes he agrees with the MB, but he often (maybe: much more often?) uses the word “תמוה” to describe the MA’s shitah.
I think it boils down to what role common practice plays in the author’s halachic process. For posqim like the CA and the AhS, the MA is machmir in baseline pesaq beyond accepted norms, which means lots of people are sinning. The AhS’s and CA’s ideologies in pesaq differ on this fundamental issue. (Queue the responses pointing you to the relevent bit in Rupture and Reconstruction here.)
The MB doesn’t all that often pasqen lechumerah as the baseline din when no one is aleady doing it. But the CC is happy suggesting chumeros as beyond the baseline.* So maybe that’s why he doesn’t find the MA’s position “startling” as often.
(Now queue my response to the R&R citation, pointing to a blog entry where I explain RSM z"l’s position that the MB didn’t really have a different philosophy of pesaq. Rather he was writing a different kind of book. The intro literally says it’s a survey, and not a code!)
Not related to your specific question, but in the broader scope of “continual bashing against one specific”. When surveying rishonim, he often will list a number who go in the same general direction, if with minor variants. E.g. Rashi, Tosafos, Rosh, the Tur… And then he will often say the Rambam has a “derekh acheres” or “shitah acheres” or my favorite “הולך בדרך אחרת לגמרי” (emphasis mine).
The AhS calls the Rambam an outlier incredibly often.
*R Amiel is credited with saying that halakhah didn’t change radically because we started following the MB. Rather, it’s because we now all think we qualify to be his ba’al nefesh.
