Based on over 100 interviews conducted in Tunis in July-August 2021 and January 2022, with actors from across the ideological spectrum, and additional rounds of interviews planned for spring & summer 2022, this paper examines why and how Tunisians have failed to articulate a coherent and unified democratic alternative to President Kais Saied's populist, autocratic power grab. Tunisians have a history of forming cross-ideological opposition coalitions to resist autocratic consolidation, most notably the 2005-2006 October Movement, in which leftist and other secularly-oriented actors worked together with the center-right Islamist Ennahdha Party to resist Ben Ali. Informed by recent fieldwork and a decade's worth of field interviews, this paper explores the extent to which Tunisia's oppositional landscape resembles or departs from Tunisian (and, to a lesser extent, regional) oppositional coalitions. How and why does the topography of Tunisian resistance to Saied's comparatively esoteric brand of autocratic rule depart from historical resistance praxes and oppositional coalitions that have preceded it in Tunisia's post-colonial era? What are the key obstacles to cross-ideological coalition-building in Tunisia today? How are Tunisia's new post-2011 political and civil society elites reacting to Saied's rule, and what patterns and common characteristics can be discerned in these responses? Do their reactions resemble or break from those of Tunisia's legacy politicians and CSOs? How are these influenced by regional oppositional coalitions that inform Tunisian choices? Finally, how do every day acts of adaptation or resistance to Saied contrast with the acts of resistance observable on the elite professional and political levels? This paper attempts to provide critical new data for answering each of these questions, informed by heavily immersive, textured, ethnographically-oriented field research conducted since the July 2021 presidential coup in Tunisia and over the longer durée, drawing on over a decade of qualitative in-depth interviews.