Yglesias cracks that, with Rudy Giuliani fending off another unpleasant extramarita-affair story, "Looks like it's time to say '9/11!' some more." For what it's worth, I've seen Giuliani on the trail numerous times this fall, and, all things considered, he makes surprisingly few 9/11 references. Rudy certainly talks about "Islamic terrorism" and Democratic "weakness" on security and so forth, but I can't recall a time when he talked about his role on the day itself. And I thought that when challenged on this point last night, he gave a fairly decent answer that harped on other parts of his record and said, "the reason that I believe I'm qualified to be president of the United States is not because of September 11th, 2001. It's because I've been tested. I've been tested in a way in which I ran the third-largest government in this country... and I got very, very remarkable results." (This idea of "results" is at least as important theme in his stump appearances than national security, at least when I've seen him.)
That said, Rudy of course doesn't have to cry "9/11"! People do it for him. At nearly every stop he winds up signing some kind of WTC or FDNY memorabilia. But he talks about the day the towers fell less than I suspect people watching him from afar might expect.
Update: A friend makes a salient point, which is that Rudy seems to have dialed back his 9/11 bragging in response to criticism that he was doing it too much. That's probably an important distinction--I should have been clearer in saying that Rudy doesn't talk about 9/11 so much right now. But commenter ralphnelle provides this reminder of his recent rhetorical history:
--Michael Crowley