In case of physical wallet theft, quickest way to offload funds in wallet backup? Assume one makes a secure online backup of their wallet and then their laptop or device that has it is stolen. For the sake of argument assume that the thief watched the user type their wallet password in somehow, or the owner kept the password in a text file or something... what is the fastest way to transfer the funds from the online backup into a new wallet?

I would imagine this would be something like a easy online service that imports a wallet so that user is not forced to use the slower default of: find computer, download client, wait forever for the blockchain sync, then transfer.
You do not need to send coin to another wallet, but you surely need them to be sent to another address (since the compromised wallet has compromised addres). What I would is go to http://blockchain.info and open a new wallet. Copy paste the first address you see, it'll be your new secure address since you just genereted it. Then import your old compromised wallet.dat to blockchain.info and then send all your coins to the address you copied (in the bitcoin client it would show as sending to self). Then you are safe if the transaction confirm since you are the only one able to use this address. You can then send those bitcoin to a new wallet.