Just as the U.S. economy suffers from a protracted Obama fever, the U.S. auto industry caught a cold in May. What healthy signs the industry did show were largely limited to small-car sales growth in reaction to higher gas prices — and the continued popularity of Chrysler SUVs.

That’s right. Sales of the Jeep Grand Cherokee rose 192 percent to 9,484 units, outselling everything else in the carmaker’s stable except for the massive Dodge RAM pickup (up 16 percent to 20,000 units). In other words, Obama’s Green Democrats would not be crowing this week about Chrysler’s payoff of federal loans were it not for its gas-guzzling, money-making Jeep and Dodge truck sales.

In a further irony, hybrid sales plummeted at the same time as the feds were rolling out their new nanny-state MPG labels designed to shame customers who don’t buy electrified vehicles. At a mere 1.5 percent of market share, the hybrid slowdown was mostly due to a lack of Prius supply in the wake of the Japanese tsunami. But that fact only highlights how dependent this niche is on a single vehicle (sales of the well-reviewed Ford Fusion hybrid, for example, tumbled 50 percent).

The EPA trumpeted its new MPG labels as necessary to adapt to the alternative-fueled cars of the future. Only in the EPA’s fevered green mind.