There is no such thing as "broader consensus". There is consensus and there is policy. There is no fuzzy line in between them. Both are part of node software and policy at least being somewhat common between nodes is good for the health of the network to reduce latency and p2p traffic, but there is no consensus mechanism involved and it is not crucial. You can run a full node without a mempool at all. Maybe you are referring to what might be called the "social consensus" within the broader community of node runners to adopt similar policy rules?
Discussion
This seems to be a semantic argument.
I’m sure you realize no one can force anyone else to run rules/policy/“consensus” that they disagree with. Even if they are bitcoin core devs.
The Bitcoin network is run by users. There is no leader
I agree with your last post here. The thinking of most core developers is that there is no point in maintaining an option that effectively achieves nothing. It is compared with a placebo. If transactions make it into blocks anyway, and there is no physical resource consumption downside, what is the point of keeping them out of the mempool?
Well I’m no expert but it seems to be that if ocean mines a block with a strict data limit, then on average it will drive big data transaction cost higher.
So yes it does matter imo.
Regardless, I am not in agreement that the current Bitcoin core software should remove the ability for users to set their own limit for op_return size
I think Ocean's market share is too small to have an effect here, though obviously that might change. They also use a different client already, so why should Bitcoin Core maintain something that they don't even directly use?
What does that even mean? 
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Do you mind elaborating?
"They also use a different client already, so why should Bitcoin Core maintain something that they don't even directly use?" -?
Oh, I was under the impression Ocean uses Knots exclusively. But I guess it could be relevant for people who would like to relay transactions to Ocean, or a Datum template provider.
Should add that I actually do support keeping the option to limit relaying these transactions.
We are also arguing on stackernews. thanks for the discussion and consistency.
I say it's a political issue at this point. bitcoin-core must stop appearing to support the forthcoming "built on bitcoin" shitcoins.
see NVK's comments to Livera
The PR should be rewritten after public discussion at the big conference coming up.
I have a feeling it will be. I'm usually not a mempool developer outside of getting its logic isolated from the rest of the consensus code, but I do care about data embedding too. I wrote my diploma thesis on the very topic.