ansible jinja2 escaping speedup

changes

diff --git c/lib/ansible/utils/__init__.py i/lib/ansible/utils/__init__.py
index 5da39ac..696f1a7 100644
--- c/lib/ansible/utils/__init__.py
+++ i/lib/ansible/utils/__init__.py
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ from ansible.module_utils.splitter import split_args, unquote
 import ansible.constants as C
 import ast
 import time
-import StringIO
+import cStringIO
 import stat
 import termios
 import tty
@@ -355,7 +355,7 @@ def _clean_data(orig_data, from_remote=False, from_inventory=False):
     if not isinstance(orig_data, basestring):
         return orig_data
 
-    data = StringIO.StringIO("")
+    data = cStringIO.StringIO()
 
     # when the data is marked as having come from a remote, we always
     # replace any print blocks (ie. {{var}}), however when marked as coming
@@ -1039,7 +1039,7 @@ def filter_leading_non_json_lines(buf):
     '''
 
     kv_regex = re.compile(r'\w=\w')
-    filtered_lines = StringIO.StringIO()
+    filtered_lines = cStringIO.StringIO()
     stop_filtering = False
     for line in buf.splitlines():
         if stop_filtering or line.startswith('{') or line.startswith('[') or kv_regex.search(line):