He has control as he is the one deciding who sits on what committees and these positions influence the voters in each Senator's States.

Note that it takes a retirement or brain cancer before any of the these Senators are willing to even start to vote their conscience.

needed to approve an SC nomination. They did that to get Neil Gorsuch approved and then figured they could put any hack judge up and get him through. Now we are likely to get a raging rapist for our highest court.

Say what you want about the super majority requirement, it did mean the majority party needed to some help from the minority which arguably led to more moderate picks.

I haven't read one report about Kavanugh's confirmation that mentioned this situation. Several have talked about McConnells holding no vote or hearings for Garland, but everyone seems to be OK that 51 votes are enough to get a SC seat filled.