The idea of changing the way drug offenders are treated is said to be personal to Christie. In April, he gave a speech in New Jersey where he said he had recently lost a friend to addiction, and as governor he has expanded a program that allows the state's police officers to carry a naloxone, a drug that can reverse heroin overdoses. His championing of drug treatment also could, if it catches on, help solve some of Christie’s political problems, giving him a new topic of conversation other than the Bridgegate scandal and perhaps blunting the impression, fed by the scandal, that he is a blustering bully. Indeed, Christie’s demeanor at Friday’s speech was notably subdued, a far cry from the finger-wagging Jersey swagger he used to demonstrate.

But most of all, Christie’s embrace of this cause represents an innovative response to Republicans’ worry that they are losing elections because the public views them as inhumane. “You can’t just afford to be pro-life when the human being is in the womb,” he said. “You have to be pro-life after they leave the womb. And sometimes being pro-life then is messy. Sometimes it’s difficult, because human beings make bad choices—we are flawed.” As a political gambit, this issue could be Christie’s analog for the “compassionate conservatism” championed by George W. Bush in 2000.

Criminal-justice reform is in vogue for Republicans, some—but not all—of whom believe the party’s old tough-on-crime-at-all-costs platform is out of date, and see relaxing it as a potential source of spending cuts. Libertarians, who favor loosening drug laws as a matter of personal freedom, have gained influence in the GOP in recent years. (Christie, however, is not on board with marijuana legalization, and at a campaign event in New Hampshire later Friday he indicated that as president, he would crack down on the states that have legalized recreational pot.) Interestingly, Rand Paul, the self-described “libertarian Republican” Kentucky senator who is also a potential presidential candidate, spoke just before Christie on Friday. But Paul glossed over his own support for liberalizing drug laws, choosing instead to emphasize his opposition to abortion and love of Israel.

Christie clearly hoped to find common ground with social conservatives, a tough crowd for him on any day. Though he boasted about being the first pro-life New Jersey governor since Roe v. Wade and spoke of bravely campaigning on the courage of his convictions, he described himself as pro-choice earlier in his career. Christie also declined to have New Jersey continue appealing a judicial verdict making gay marriage legal in the state, another strike against him in social conservatives’ book. But if he runs for president in 2016, Christie must show that he can play to this type of crowd, which famously dominates the Iowa Republican caucuses and constitutes a substantial swath of the GOP base.