IMHO, making absolutely sure that new patches are safe is of utmost importance.
Hurrying a patch through might, at best, give us a feature one month ahead of time in the main client. At worst it might introduce an exploit into the main client that would crush any existing trust in Bitcoin. Security is so vital when it comes to a program like the main Bitcoin client. If we expect people to at some point start using Bitcoin as a currency, I can see no higher priority than security.
One security hole can potentially rob people of the equivalent of thousands of dollars. One extra feature lacking for a month is a very tiny advantage compared to this.